< 


^.2L  .0/ 

PRESENTED  TO  THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 

BY 

Professor  flenry  von  Dyke,  D.D.,  L1L1.D. 


BR  45 

.B63 

i  1895 

Thompson, 

Hugh  Mi 

Her, 

1830- 

1902. 

The  world 

and  the 

wres 

tlers 

THE  BOHLEN  LECTURES  FOR  1895 

THE  WORLD  AND  THE 
WRESTLERS 

PERSONALITY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY 


BY    , 

HUGH   MILLER  THOMPSON 

BISHOP  OF-MISSISSIPPI 


& 


NEW  YORK 
THOMAS  WHITTAKER 

2  AND  3  BIBLE  HOUSE 
1895 


Copyright,  1895, 
By  Thomas  Whittaker. 


The  John  Bohlen  lectureship. 


John  Bohlen,  who  died  in  Philadelphia  on  the  26th 
day  of  April,  1874,  bequeathed  to  trustees  a  fund  of  One 
Hundred  Thousand  Dollars,  to  be  distributed  to  reli- 
gious and  charitable  objects  in  accordance  with  the 
well-known  wishes  of  the  testator. 

By  a  deed  of  trust,  executed  June  2,  1875,  the  trus- 
tees, under  the  will  of  Mr.  Bohlen,  transferred  and 
paid  over  to  "The  Rector,  Church  Wardens,  and  Ves- 
trymen of  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Trinity,  Philadel- 
phia," in  trust,  a  sum  of  money  for  certain  designated 
purposes,  out  of  which  fund  the  sum  of  Ten  Thousand 
Dollars  was  set  apart  for  the  endowment  of  The  John 
Bohlen  Lectureship,  upon  the  following  terms  and 
conditions: 

"  The  money  shall  be  invested  in  good  substantial 
and  safe  securities,  and  held  in  trust  for  a  fund  to  be 
called  The  John  Bohlen  Lectureship,  and  the  income 
shall  be  applied  annually  to  the  payment  of  a  qualified 
person,  whether  clergyman  or  layman,  for  the  delivery 
and  publication  of  at  least  one  hundred  copies  of  two 
or  more  lecture  sermons.  These  lectures  shall  be  de- 
livered at  such  time  and  place,  in  the  city  of  Philadel- 


phia,  as  the  persons  nominated  to  appoint  the  lecturer 
shall  from  time  to  time  determine,  giving  at  least  six 
months'  notice  to  the  person  appointed  to  deliver  the 
same,  when  the  same  may  conveniently  be  done,  and  in 
no  case  selecting  the  same  person  as  lecturer  a  second 
time  within  a  period  of  five  years.  The  payment  shall 
be  made  to  said  lecturer,  after  the  lectures  have  been 
printed  and  received  by  the  trustees,  of  all  the  income 
for  the  year  derived  from  said  fund,  after  defraying 
the  expense  of  printing  the  lectures  and  the  other  inci- 
dental expenses  attending  the  same. 

"  The  subject  of  such  lectures  shall  be  such  as  is 
within  the  terms  set  forth  in  the  will  of  the  Rev.  John 
Bampton,  for  the  delivery  of  what  are  known  as  the 
'Bampton  Lectures,'  at  Oxford,  or  any  other  subject 
distinctively  connected  with  or  relating  to  the  Christian 
Religion. 

"  The  lecturer  shall  be  appointed  annually  in  the 
month  of  May,  or  as  soon  thereafter  as  can  conven- 
iently be  done,  by  the  persons  who  for  the  time  being 
shall  hold  the  offices  of  Bishop  of  the  Protestant  Epis- 
copal Church  of  the  Diocese  in  which  is  the  Church  of 
the  Holy  Trinity;  the  Rector  of  said  Church;  the  Pro- 
fessor of  Biblical  Learning,  the  Professor  of  System- 
atic Divinity,  and  the  Professor  of  Ecclesiastical  His- 
tory, in  the  Divinity  School  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal 
Church  in  Philadelphia. 

"  In  case  either  of  said  offices  are  vacant,  the  others 
may  nominate  the  lecturer." 

Under  this  trust,  the  Right  Rev.  Hugh  Miller 
Thompson,  D.  D.,  D.C.L.,  Bishop  of  the  Diocese  of 
Mississippi,  was  appointed  to  deliver  the  lectures  for 
the  year  1895. 


CONTENTS. 


LECTURE  pAGE 

I.  Personality  of  Man 5 

II.  Personality  of  God 45 

III.  Responsibility  of  God 79 

IV.  Responsibility  of  Man in 


LECTURE  I. 
PERSONALITY   OF  MAN, 


And  Jacob  was  left  alone ;  and  there  wrestled  a  Man  with  him 
until  the  breaking  of  the  day.  And  when  He  saw  that  He  prevailed 
not  against  him,  He  touched  the  hollow  of  his  thigh;  and  the  hollow 
of  Jacob's  thigh  was  out  of  joint,  as  he  wrestled  with  Him.  Atid 
He  said,  Let  Me  go,  for  the  day  breaketh.  And  he  said,  I  will  not 
let  Thee  go,  except  Thou  bless  me.  And  He  said  unto  him,  What  is 
thy  name?  And  he  said,  Jacob.  And  He  said,  Thy  name  shall 
be  called  no  more  Jacob,  but  Israel :  for  as  a  prince  hast  thou  power 
with  God  and  with  men,  and  hast  prevailed.  And  Jacob  asked 
Him,  and  said,  Tell  me,  I  pray  Thee,  Thy  name.  And  He  said, 
Wherefore  is  it  that  thou  dost  ask  after  My  name  ?  And  He  blessed 
him  there.  And  Jacob  called  the  name  of  the  place  Peniel :  for  I 
have  seen  God  face  to  face,  and  my  life  is  preserved. 

Gen.  xxxii.  24-30. 


THE  WORLD  AND  THE  WRESTLERS. 


LECTURE    I. 

PERSONALITY    OF   MAN. 


TT  is  my  purpose  in  these  Lectures — the  duty  of 
-*■  delivering  which  I  have  accepted  with  great 
diffidence — I  will  not  say  to  discuss,  I  will  much 
less  say  to  explain,  but  to  call  attention  to,  and 
make  suggestions  upon,  the  fact  of  Personality, 
which  is  to  me  the  most  wonderful  fact  in  my 
knowledge — I  think,  indeed,  I  may  say  in  the 
whole  circle  of  human  knowledge. 

That  I  say  "I";  that  I  speak  to  other  "  I*s  " ; 
that  I  deal  with  them,  meet  them,  talk  to  them, 
love  some  of  them  more  than  I  love  myself;  that 
some  of  them  have  gone  from  my  sight;  that  I 
have  stood  by  the  graves  where  we  buried  their 
material  forms,  and  yet  that  they  are  living  to 
me;  will,  indeed,  never  die  to  me;  are  more  liv- 

7 


8  PERSONALITY  OF  MAN. 

ing  and  more  dear  and  near  to  me  than  other 
"IV  which  are  full  of  what  we  call  life  and 
action — these  things,  I  say,  which  are  facts,  and 
to  me,  at  least,  are  far  more  wonderful  and  closely- 
important  facts  than  any  others,  must  be,  like 
other  facts,  accepted  and  dealt  with. 

They  are  practically  excluded  from  the  circle  of 
what,  in  our  day,  is  called  Science,  which  has  taken 
for  herself  as  yet  a  very  narrow  range. 

The  science  of  man  is  not  biology,  nor  even 
psychology,  nor  sociology.  The  most  complete 
discussion  of  the  physical  make-up  and  bodily 
origin  of  man,  the  same  discussion  of  his  intellec- 
tual powers,  and  the  added  study  of  his  social 
habits  and  conditions  have  not  grasped  the  real 
question. 

One  can,  for  instance,  study  biology  in  oysters, 
in  barnacles,  in  mosquitoes.  (And  the  biology  of 
these  last  is,  in  some  respects,  far  more  curious 
than  that  of  man.)  One  can  study  psychology  in 
apes.  I  love  to  study  it  in  dogs,  and  in  them  it 
is  wonderful.  One  can  study  sociology  in  bees, 
and  devote  a  well-spent  life  to  it ;  and  one  might 
— which  nobody  has  yet  done — devote  a  life  to 
the  study  of  sociology  in  ants,  with  great  profit, 
perhaps,  certainly  with  great  interest  to  himself 


PERSONALITY  OF  MAN  9 

and  others.  But  none  of  these  sciences  touch  at 
all  the  questions  I  have  suggested. 

Shall  we  go  on  excluding  from  Science  the 
most  close,  pressing,  experienced  facts  with  which 
we  are  familiar?  How  comes  the  "I"?  What 
does  it  mean  to  be  an  "  I  "  and  say  "I"?  to 
stand  by  itself  and  separate  itself  from  the  entire 
universe  completely ;  yes,  completely,  and  just  as 
completely  from  all  other  "Fs"?  How  comes  it 
to  feel  that  it  can  stand  alone,  must  stand  alone, 
indeed,  very  often,  and  assert  itself  in  the  teeth  of 
all  circumstances  and  of  all  men,  and  say,  "  I  will," 
or  "  I  will  not "  ?  How  comes  it  most  insolently, 
in  one  point  of  view,  to  stand  before  ten  thousand 
other  "  Fs "  and  say  in  their  scowling  faces, 
"  This  ought  to  be,"  "  This  ought  not  to  be;"  "  I 
will  die,  but  I  will  stand  by  it,  that  this  is  wrong  " 
or  "  this  is  right  "  ?     How  comes  this  ? 

Shall  we  ever  have  a  branch  of  Science  called 
"  pneumatology  "  ?  Science  has  never  reached 
the  pneuma  yet.  Hitherto  she  has  dealt  with  men 
as  animals,  somata,  psychai,  bodies,  living  things — 
bodies  in  their  biology :  the  way  they  live  and 
continue  their  kind ;  science  of  vegetables,  of  cab- 
bages and  carrots ;  science  of  cholera  germs,  diph- 
theria, and  smallpox. 


10  PERSONALITY  OF  MAN. 

With  psychology,  in  a  way :  what  sense  the 
things  and  creatures  have;  how  they  manage  to 
keep  up  the  psyche,  the  life,  the  arrangements 
and  provisions  for  existence  and  continuance. 

With  sociology  also :  how  the  things  and  crea- 
tures live  together  and  repel  and  attract  each 
other;  the  sociology  of  cucumbers  and  squashes, 
which  every  gardener  ought  to  know  or  he  will 
spoil  both  crops.  Indeed,  a  step  farther,  rising 
even  to  ourselves — a  vast  stride  ;  that  higher  races 
and  lower  races  of  men,  both  living  together'  in 
equal  conditions,  must  strike  a  general  average, 
and  the  high  must  go  half-way  down  if  the  low 
is  to  come  half-way  up. 

But  with  pneumatology  Science  bows  herself 
out.  I  believe  Science  is  wrong  by  her  own 
definition  of  herself.  Why  should  she  leave  the 
pneuma  to  religion  alone?  Why  abandon  it  in 
despair  to  what  some  of  her  disciples  consider  the 
dreams  and  imaginations  of  mere  religion  ? 

There  are  the  facts! — facts  evident,  insistent, 
close  about  our  paths  and  about  our  beds;  facts 
of  the  "I"  and  its  duties,  its  transgressions  and 
their  penalties,  its  days  and  its  nights,  its  com- 
panionships and  its  loneliness,  its  awful  experi- 
ences, its  visions  of  the  high,  white  heavens  and 


PERSONALITY  OF  MAN.  1 1 

of  the  awful,  low-down,  lurid  hells.  Why  has 
Science  walled  all  these  facts  out  ? 

Will  you  pardon  me  for  saying  that  I  think 
Science  is  very  small  so  far?  Small,  because 
she  ignores  the  facts  right  at  her  door,  puts  on 
her  spectacles,  and  goes  round,  like  an  ancient 
witch,  in  the  dark  and  the  swamp,  to  find  "  facts  " 
which,  if  they  be  facts,  are  of  no  great  vital  conse- 
quence to  men,  and  never  deigns  to  deal  with 
or  help  to  explain  the  facts  that  stare  me  in  the 
face  at  my  hearthside,  at  my  lying  down,  at  my 
rising  up. 

But  Science  is  in  her  childhood  yet,  and  must 
grow;  or,  to  use  her  own  phrases,  ''develop"  or 
"  evolute."  She  has  millions  of  long  miles  before 
her,  and  possibly  thousands  of  long  years,  and  she 
is  creeping  yet;  has,  perhaps,  by  God's  blessing, 
in  these  last  years,  been  provided  with  a  go-cart 
(I  hope  so),  that  she  may  learn  the  sooner  to  walk 
— namely,  the  working  hypothesis  of  evolution. 

So  let  us  be  very  thankful  that  there  is  any 
movement  at  all,  on  the  line  of  knowing  things,  by 
the  human  psyche — any  movement  beyond  trying 
to  know  how  to  provide  the  human  soma  with 
better  food,  drink,  and  shelter. 

It  is  inevitable  that,  at  last,  there  shall  be  some 


12  PERSONALITY  OF  MAN. 

attempt  to  know  something  of  man ;  and  that 
means,  for  us  Nicene  Christians,  something  of 
God.     The  Pneuma  will  seek  to  be  known  also. 

For  man  is  pneuma,  and  God  is  Pneuma.  The 
Lord  put  those  two  facts  together  long  ago.  "  God 
is  a  Spirit  [Pneuma]  :  and  they  that  worship  Him 
must  worship  Him  in  spirit  and  in  truth." 

I  believe  there  is  a  science  of  the  pneuma  pos- 
sible, and  to  be  formulated  sometime — a  collec- 
tion and  formulation  of  the  facts  concerning  egos, 
Ts — that  is,  men  and  God.  These  are  the  only 
Fs  that  Science  can  recognize  and  investigate. 

I  think  these  are  legitimate  subjects,  too,  of 
scientific  investigation ;  I  do  not  mean  speculative 
or  metaphysical  word-confusion,  I  mean  scientific 
investigation  upon  the  strictest  and  most  peremp- 
tory lines. 

It  will  take  many  ages,  perhaps,  before  Science, 
working  up  through  bathybius,  monads,  and  mol- 
lusks,  developing  slowly,  as  the  law  of  development 
compels,  will  venture  upon  the  study  of  an  "  I  " 
even  finite  and  earthly,  and  all  the  facts  that  "  I " 
holds,  and  all  that  grow  out  of  them. 

It  will  take,  no  doubt,  endless  myriads  of  ages, 
and  in  other  worlds,  before  Science  reaches  the 
point  of  trying  to  study  and  understand  the  awful, 


PERSONALITY  OF  MAN  13 

infinite,  eternal  "  I  Am  that  I  Am."  And  yet  "  to 
know  God,  this  is  life  eternal."  But  this  will  be 
science  of  the  pneuma,  not  of  the  psyche. 

I  believe  there  is  no  knowing  man  apart  from 
knowing  God.  These  two  have  always  gone 
together — somehow  are  always  bound  together. 
You  may  know  all  about  a  horse,  I  think;  all 
about  a  mule,  even  (a  much  more  "  differentiated  " 
animal) — I  was  going  to  say,  without  knowing 
anything  about  God;  but  I  doubt  even  that.  I 
am  sure  you  can  know  nothing  about  man,  in  the 
differentiation  which  makes  him  man  and  distin- 
guishes him  from  either  the  bird  or  the  animal, 
without  knowing  a  great  deal  about  God.  You 
certainly  cannot  know  much  about  God  unless 
you  know  a  good  deal  about  man. 

For  these  two  are  "  I's,"  and,  as  far  as  we  can 
study  them  in  this  visible  world,  are  the  only 
"I's."  I  hesitate  to  say  it,  yet  why  should  I? 
In  scientific  speech  I  should  be  compelled  to  say 
it.  In  Nicene  speech  I  say  it  continually.  These 
two  "I's"  are  of  one  species!  From  the  one  I 
can  at  least  begin  the  study  of  the  other.  "  All 
power  is  given  unto  Me  in  heaven  and  in  earth." 
A  Man,  remember,  said  this.  He  is  a  Man  to-day, 
as  He  was  then.     He  will  remain  a  Man  forever. 


14  PERSONALITY  OF  MAN 

We  start  with  that  and  all  its  consequences  (and 
they  are  overwhelming)  as  a  matter  of  faith. 

In  the  end  it  will  be  a  matter  of  Science — that 
Man  governs  the  universe.  The  end  of  all  living, 
saving  faith  is  knowledge.  Faith  is  tentative, 
helps  you  to  scientia  ac  last — the  outcome  of  faith, 
that  for  which  faith  was  given.  Faith  in  this 
realm  furnishes,  that  is,  the  "  working  hypothesis." 

I  have  therefore  decided  in  these  Lectures  to 
ask  you  to  let  your  thought  play  about  the  sub- 
ject of  Personality.  It  will,  in  the  ages  coming,  be 
a  subject  of  scientific  investigation.  It  is,  I  need 
scarcely  say,  not  such  a  subject  yet,  and  never- 
theless it  lies  at  the  basis  of  all  Science.  Unless 
there  be  an  "  I  "  to  know,  there  can  be  no  know- 
ledge. 

Of  course  I  am  aware  that  "  metaphysics,"  as  it 
is  called,  studies  and  has  studied  the  ego.  But 
I  am  using  the  word  "  science  "  here  in  its  strict 
meaning — the  gathering  and  coordinating  of  as- 
certained, visible,  hearable,  or  tangible  facts.  In 
that  sense  Science  has  declined,  so  far,  to  deal 
with  the  "  I  " — much  to  my  surprise,  and  your 
surprise,  if  you  will  consider  all  that  the  neglect 
implies.  But,  as  I  say  again,  Science  is  yet  in  the 
germ,  and  will  develop  into  somewhat  really  vital 


PERSONALITY  OF  MAN.  15 

as  man  develops  and  becomes  more  a  man  and 
more  an  "  I." 

My  line  is  the  humble  one  of  suggesting.  I 
have  no  theory.  I  have  no  science  myself.  I 
am  not  anxious  to  have  you  agree  with  me.  I  am 
desirous  to  set  you  thinking.  To  think  is  itself  an 
end,  and  a  great  one.  To  think  on  high  things  is 
a  noble  end  and  a  sufficient,  whether  or  not  you 
come  to  a  logical,  formulated  conclusion. 

Indeed,  logical,  formulated,  walled-in,  and  fin- 
ished conclusions  on  the  essentials  of  things  are 
sure  to  be  false.  They  are  only  true  in  the  count- 
ing and  arranging  and  measuring  of  the  outward 
relations  of  things. 

For  instance,  you  can  weigh  an  alleged  ton  of 
coal,  and  come  to  an  unerring  logical  and  mathe- 
matical conclusion  that  eighteen  hundred  pounds 
is  not  a  ton,  although  you  may  have  paid  for  a  ton ! 

But  you  cannot  weigh  a  spiritual  or  even  an  in- 
tellectual force,  and  decide  how  many  foot-pounds 
of  such  energy  were  exhausted  by  the  dealer  in 
cheating  you  out  of  those  two  hundred  pounds  of 
coal ! 

To  say  what  I  have  to  say  on  this  subject  of 
Personality,  I  make  my  starting-point  one  of  the 


1 6  PERSONALITY  OF  MAN. 

most  illogical  and,  to  the  lower  intelligence  (the 
psyche  of  St.  Paul,  the  invisible  part  we  share 
with  our  dogs  and  horses),  the  most  mysterious  of 
all  the  incidents  in  the  Old  Testament.  It  appeals 
entirely  to  the  pneuma,  as  you  will  see — the  spirit- 
ual understanding ;  that  which  differentiates  man. 
You  cannot  bring  to  its  full  understanding  the 
psychical  intelligence  at  all,  which  is  nevertheless 
so  imperative — that  intelligence  which  the  horse 
exercises  when  he  goes  to  the  watering-trough, 
and  man  exercises  when  he  decides  that  one  thou- 
sand dollars  at  ten  percent,  per  annum  is  just  as 
profitable,  as  an  investment,  as  two  thousand 
dollars  at  five  percent,  per  annum,  supposing  the 
security  be  equally  good. 

The  incident  is  outside  all  that,  though  all  that 
lay  near  it,  as  it  always  does — in  this  case  very  close. 

It  is  in  the  realm  of  the  pneuma ;  deals  with  pneu- 
mata,  "  Fs,"  personalities  ;  and  is  discerned  only  in 
the  realm  of  realities — the  kingdom  spiritual. 

The  incident  is  wholly  mysterious — dark  with 
the  night  and  the  desert  silences,  awful  with  the 
loneliness  of  the  midnight  stars  and  the  empty 
world,  burst  into  at  the  last  with  the  red  shafts  of 
the  dawn. 

But  the  mystery  throws  no  shadow  upon  the 


PERSONALITY  OF  MAN  I  7 

central  fact.  Two  "  I's  "  are  here,  two  "  thou's," 
two  persons. 

They  are  at  grips  with  each  other.  Each  clasps, 
holds,  strains,  questions  the  other.  There  is  the 
sense  that  each  has  a  hold  upon  the  other.  The 
hold  may  be  for  good  or  for  ill.  But  it  is  a  wrest- 
ling hold ;  contains  the  power  to  question,  and  to 
lame  or  to  bless. 

One  of  the  wrestlers  we  know.  He  is  just  a 
man,  and  by  no  means  a  noble  or  a  strong  man. 
His  life  has  been  a  mean,  tricky  life  from  the  be- 
ginning. He  cheats  his  father,  old  and  blind ;  he 
turns  deaf  ears  to  the  cry  of  his  starving  brother 
for  food.  He  has  it,  but  refuses  to  share  it  save  at 
the  price  he  may  wring  from  utmost  need.  And 
the  brother  is  his  twin  brother,  and  he  has  already 
cheated  him  out  of  his  father's  blessing. 

The  man  has  fled  from  the  face  of  the  angry 
brother — am  I  wrong  in  saying  the  righteously 
indignant  brother?  All  times  are  alike  to  men, 
since  men  are  found  the  same  in  all  times.  And 
to  take  advantage  of  a  brother's  need,  to  traffic  in 
his  want  and  hunger,  to  forestall  the  market  and 
make  one's  self  rich  out  of  his  misery,  to  play  upon 
his  simplicity  and  trust,  even  play  upon  his  weakness 
and  his  sins,  is  as  old  as  brotherhood,  you  see. 


1 8  PERSONALITY  OF  MAN 

There  is  nothing  of  this  sort  in  our  dealings  in 
produce  exchange  or  coal  market  that  was  not  at 
work  in  this  man — the  supplanter. 

He  had  bad  blood  in  him.  The  law  of  heredity 
is  tyrannous.  He  had  been  taught  his  trickery  by 
his  mother,  who  came  by  it  legitimately.  It  is 
bad  enough  to  be  taught  ill  by  one's  father — to 
inherit  evil  from  him.  Greatly  worse  is  it  to  in- 
herit wickedness  from,  or  be  taught  wickedness 
by,  one's  mother! 

The  serene,  stately,  dreamy  desert  prince  Isaac, 
who  walked  abroad  in  the  splendid  eventides  of 
the  Orient  to  muse  in  the  meadows  alone,  was 
true  son  of  his  princely  father.  But  this  wrest- 
ling, straining  man,  caught  at  last  in  his  own  evil 
nets,  owed  it  to  the  bad  strain  from  his  beautiful 
mother's  Mesopotamian  kindred. 

Nay,  Science  does  not  teach  us  anything  that 
we  do  not  read  on  the  pages  of  these  old  Biblia, 
these  books  which  the  spiritual  consciousness  of 
the  ancient  children  of  God  selected,  and  by  that 
consciousness  canonized,  and  held,  by  whomsoever 
written,  edited,  or  revised  within  her,  as  sacred 
and  inspired  upon  God's  nature  and  man's,  and 
the  ethical  relations  between  these  two. 

Evil  fruit  from  evil  seed  always !    Wrong  work- 


PERSONALITY  OF  MAN  19 

ing  out  further  wrong!  Bad  children  from  bad 
fathers !  The  terrible  persistence  of  the  evil  thing 
done,  and  the  glorious  blessing  of  the  thing  well 
done !  The  awful  abiding  of  the  fact,  and  the 
fruitfulness  thereof  forevermore ! 

From  the  face  of  the  brother  the  prescient 
mother  sent  her  favorite  to  her  own  kin.  ■  Some- 
how it  always  goes  so.  It  is  the  ethical  law.  The 
liar  goes  to  liars,  the  trickster  finds  himself  among 
tricksters,  the  knave  among  knaves.  One  goes 
to  his  own  place  in  this  world.  Shall  he  not  go 
to  his  own  place  in  all  worlds?  Even  Judas  has 
friends  somewhere  and  finds  society.  He  goes 
"  to  his  own  place." 

Yet  even  to  such  an  one  as  Jacob  come,  in  the 
loneliness  of  the  night,  the  visions  that  tell  him  of 
a  loftier  life  and  a  higher  order.1  Wheresoever 
he  comes  into  nature  and  her  silences  the  upper 
realm  breaks  on  this  man  strangely.  "  Strangely," 
do  I  say?  Is  it  not  the  rule?  Alone  on  the 
mountain  summit,  alone  with  the  stars,  alone  with 
the  sea,  what  does  the  soul  not  utterly  gone  to  the 
other  side  care  for  flocks  and  herds,  for  stocks  or 
bonds  or  bank-accounts,  so  only  he  sees  once  that 
the   real   eternal   home   lies  above,  and  one  must 

1  Gen.  xxviii.  10-15. 


20  PERSONALITY  OF  MAN. 

climb,  not  crawl,  and  the  long,  strange  ascent  must 
be  toward  the  everlasting  light ! 

So  what  we  call  "  nature  " — which  is  God's  ex- 
pression of  Himself  to  His  child  while  man  stays 
His  child — calls  him  to  worship,  and  in  her  vast 
aisles  and  naves,  which  we  but  poorly  imitate  in 
our  noblest  architecture,  lifts  him  to  the  splendor 
of  what  lies  above  all  summits,  and  the  worship 
that  chants  its  liturgies  beyond  the  gold-and-pur- 
ple  rood-screens  of  all  earthly  dawns,  where  he 
makes  the  snow-crags  his  altars. 

God  walks  the  mountains.  God  dwells  in  the 
thick  darkness.  God  speaks  in  the  thunder,  in 
the  roar  of  the  cataract,  in  league-long  breakers 
thundering  on  the  shore.  One  meets  His  foot- 
steps on  the  loneliness  of  the  illimitable  sea, 
comes  near  Him  in  the  vast  silences  of  desolate 
lands. 

The  grand  nature-liturgy  of  the  old  Hebrew 
books  is  reverent  as  it  is  true,  fearless  as  it  is 
spiritual.  It  is  chanted  from  Moses  to  David, 
from  David  to  the  prophets.  They  all  have  caught 
the  stately  rhythm  of  the  worship  of  the  living 
God,  who  is  present,  ruling,  working,  revealing 
Himself  in  star  and  flower  and  little  bird,  in  ava- 
lanche and  ice  summits,  in  the  little  rivulet  singing 


PERSONALITY  OF  MAN.  2  I 

low  through  the  clover,  in  the  roar  of  the  cataract 
plunging  from  the  steep. 

So  it  came  even  to  this  man,  who  still  remained, 
notwithstanding  his  sin,  a  child  of  Abraham,  to 
see  his  vision  in  the  desert  as  he  fled  to  Padan-aram. 
But  in  the  vision  he  saw  only  what  he  was  able  to 
see.  It  is  thus  always.  The  divinest  vision  reveals 
what  the  seer  is  capable  of  seeing.  In  the  ladder 
let  down  from  heaven,  in  the  angels  ascending  and 
descending,  he  sees  only  what  he  is  capable  of  see- 
ing, hears  only  what  he  is  capable  of  hearing. 

The  ladder,  you  will  observe,  suggests  no  climb- 
ing for  him.  The  voice  of  the  Lord  from  the 
summit  has  no  call  to  a  nobler  life.  That  life  has 
run  on  low  levels  thus  far,  and  still,  even  from 
opened  heaven,  this  man  hears  only  of  flocks  and 
herds  and  increase  and  an  earthly  success. 

And  still,  even  so,  it  was  much.  There  was  a 
world  higher  than  this.  There  was  a  God  who 
could  bless,  and  from  whom  one  could  seek  good 
things,  and  who  loved  to  give  them.  He  was 
good,  at  least  to  some  men,  and  would  give  them 
many  good  things  and  keep  old  promises,  for  He 
was  true  and  righteous — so  only  men  served  and 
loved  Him.  There  were  steps  up  to  Him,  and 
messengers  to  come  and  go. 


22  PERSONALITY  OF  MAN 

There  are  profound  lessons  in  that  first  desert 
vision,  though  I  cannot  dwell  upon  them  here. 

One  of  them  is  that  God  necessarily  meets  men 
on  the  levels  where  they  stand ;  that  to  raise  them 
He  stoops — must  finally  stoop  to  Gethsemane 
and  the  cross,  indeed ;  and  also  that,  with  heaven 
opened,  they  have  eyes  to  see  only  what  they  can 
see,  and  ears  to  hear  only  what  they  can  hear. 

The  man  rises  in  the  morning  and  tries  to  make 
a  bargain  with  Him  whom  he  has  seen  in  the 
vision.  It  is  a  pledge  of  so  much  offering  and  so 
much  service  for  so  many  sheep  and  oxen,  kine 
and  camels.  It  reveals  the  spiritual  nature  at  its 
lowest.  Still  it  is  a  spiritual  nature,  and  believes 
in  a  spiritual  world  above  sheep  and  oxen. 

And  the  man  goes  on  his  journey,  and  it  fares 
with  him  according  to  the  vicissitudes  of  an  en- 
tirely earthly  life. 

The  life  for  twenty  years  thereafter  was  lived 
on  exceedingly  low  levels.  It  was  a  war  of  wits 
between  himself  and  his  uncle  Laban;  and  the 
wives  he  married  seem  to  have  been  true  daughters 
of  their  father,  and  thoroughly  fit  for  the  husband. 
One  does  not  wonder  that  the  elder  brother, 
impetuous,  imperious,  princely,  preferred  the 
daughters  of  Heth,  the  princesses  of  the  desert,  to 


PERSONALITY  OF  MAN.  23 

these  scheming  relatives  of  his,  who  could  help 
the  husband  to  cheat  the  father,  and  in  their  elope- 
ment should  even  rob  the  poor  old  semi-idolater 
of  his  ancestral  images — fetishes,  teraphim,  what- 
ever they  were — on  which  he  thought  his  luck 
depended. 

It  could  not  be  that  the  beautiful  Rachel  stole 
them  and  lied  about  them  because  she  put  much 
faith  in  their  power  herself,  after  seeing  how 
poorly  they  had  served  her  father  against  the 
schemes  of  her  husband.  It  is  sad  to  think  they 
must  have  been  of  silver  (there  was  no  gold  in  cir- 
culation in  those  days — no  question  of  "  bimetal- 
lism "),  and  that  she  stole  them  for  their  intrinsic 
value. 

It  is  not  at  all,  you  will  say,  an  edifying  story ; 
and  certainly  the  family  arrangements  and  the 
shrewd  trickery  of  Padan-aram  hold  no  example 
to  you  or  me.  But  they  hold  this.  Critics  tell  us 
to  throw  away  these  old  Biblia  because  they  are 
clearly  not  of  God,  in  that  they  relate  such  doings 
by  people  asserted  to  be  under  God's  special 
charge  and  benediction ;  that,  indeed,  they  are 
immoral  in  such  assertion,  and  unfit  to  be  supposed 
the  revelation  of  a  righteous  God. 

I  confess  the  strength  of  a  part  of  the  objection 


24  PERSONALITY  OF  MAX. 

from  the  standpoint  of  merely  literary  criticism, 
lower  or  higher. 

Of  course  the  Biblia — the  collection  of  books — 
history,  poetry  (dramatic,  idyllic,  lyric,  epic),  law, 
ritual,  folk-lore,  prophesy — may  be,  and  I,  for  one, 
frankly  concede  ought  to  be,  from  one  side,  treated 
simply  as  literature  and  nothing  else — a  collection 
of  ancient  books.  Only  one  must  not  carry  into 
them  the  ethics  and  opinions  of  this  century,  and 
criticize  them  on  those  grounds.  That  is  not  lit- 
erary criticism  at  all.  We  must  understand  that 
the  literary  critic  must  remain  content  with  his 
chosen  occupation.  He  has  nothing  whatever  to 
do  with  the  ethics,  the  manners,  or  the  opinions  of 
the  book  he  criticizes.  He  deals  with  it  simply  as 
a  piece  of  written  matter  about  whose  age,  author- 
ship, and  literary  style  alone  he  is  concerned. 

I  think  you  will  concede  that  this  is  not  a  very 
lofty,  though  it  may  be  a  necessary  and  very  useful, 
business.  Take  an  illustration.  A  critic  who  would 
spend  his  time  on  minute  examination  of  the  let- 
ters and  words  of  Shakespeare's  dramas,  and  who 
might  even  finally  reach  the  conclusion  that  former 
editors  were  all  wrong  in  the  arrangement  of  the 
dramas,  and  that  "  Hamlet "  was  written  before 
"Timon,"  and  that  "rare  Ben  Jonson  "  redacted 


PERSONALITY  OF  MAN.  2$ 

"  King  Lear  " — that,  indeed,  Shakespeare  did  not 
write  "  Lear,"  "  Macbeth,"  or  "  The  Tempest "  at 
all,  but  another  man  of  the  same  name  did — might 
be  a  very  useful  man,  and,  in  his  own  opinion, 
imagine  he  had  done  the  world  service ;  but  just 
as  a  bit  of  common  sense  and  general  usefulness, 
we  would  hardly  call  him  a  high  critic,  much  less 
a  "higher"  critic  than  the  man  who  taught  all 
readers  and  lovers  of  the  mass  of  literature  we  call 
"  Shakespeare  "  to  find  subtler  meanings,  deeper 
philosophies,  profounder  insight  into  man  and 
nature  and  the  nature  of  the  Lord  of  them  both, 
than  they  had  ever  before  seen  or  even  suspected. 
It  abides  with  me  as  one  of  the  queer,  topsy- 
turvy puzzles  that  crop  up  outside  the  country  of 
the  Sphinx,  that  the  term  "  Higher  Criticism " 
should  have  been  arrogated  for  themselves  and 
conceded  by  others  to  gentlemen  whose  business 
upon  a  body  of  ancient  literature  begins  and  ends 
with  criticizing  its  words  and  letters,  and  deriving 
thence  its  supposed  dates  and  origins,  and  who 
have  never  set  themselves  by  one  flash  of  intelli- 
gence to  deal  with  its  meaning  and  its  purpose! 
And  this  literature,  mind,  the  unspeakably  most 
influential,  formative,  commanding,  and  control- 
ling literature  known  since  time  began ! 


26  PERSONALITY  OF  MAN. 

I  concede  the  usefulness  of  the  alphabet  critics ; 
but  why  call  them  "higher  critics"?  Thomas  a 
Kempis  was  a  higher  critic  than  all  of  them  put 
together! 

But  to  turn  to  the  objection  that  these  things 
are  not  of  God  because  our  higher  sense  condemns 
the  actions  related. 

You  ask,  "  Is  Genesis  inspired?"  I  should  an- 
swer you,  "  Yes !  Inspired !  Profoundly  inspired ! 
Inspired  as  long  as  the  world  lasts!" 

Does  anybody  say  "  invented,  forged  "  ?  I  ask, 
"  Where  is  the  inventor  or  forger  so  much  an  im- 
becile as  to  write  out  the  story  of  this  man  Jacob 
— to  go  no  further — and  then  to  seriously  dare  tell 
us  that  this  poor  creature  was  '  chosen  of  God'  ?  " 

Suppose  the  story  of  Jacob  and  his  father  and 
grandfather  an  epic,  invented  by  a  poet,  a  saga- 
man,  a  scribe  idealizing.  Can  you  imagine  such 
inventor  writing  out  Jacob  ?  You  have  examples 
in  all  literature,  from  Gautama  Buddh  to  Tenny- 
son's Arthur.  Try  Homer,  try  Virgil,  try  Milton's 
Satan,  if  you  wish  ;  can  you  find  any  sane  inventor 
setting  out  his  hero  in  such  phrase  and  guise  as 
Moses  (or  some  other  man  of  the  same  name)  sets 
out  Jacob  ? 

Can  you  imagine  any  critic,  from  Celsus  to  Vol- 


PERSONALITY  OF  MAN  2*] 

taire,  who  would  propose  to  write  you  down  their 
own  lives — even  their  own  lives  most  loftily  ideal- 
ized— as  a  permanent  book  of  human  ethics  in  the 
way  Moses,  or  the  other  man,  writes  the  story  of 
the  man  whom  God  says  He  "  loved  "  ? 

When  your  metaphysician,  your  philosopher, 
your  scientist,  your  poet,  your  autobiographist, 
your  historian,  your  dramatist,  from  Shakespeare 
down,  gives  you  a  hero,  do  they  not  all  tell  you 
what  they  think  a  man,  a  hero,  a  father  of  hu- 
manity ought,  in  their  conception,  to  be — not  at 
all  what  he  is? 

The  only  book  that  ever  dared  to  write  down 
men,  heroes,  demigods,  beginners  of  races,  fathers 
of  ages,  "  friends  of  God  "  just  as  they  were  and 
as  they  are  is  the  one  book  and  the  sole  book  of 
epic  and  drama  true  to  God,  because  it  is  true  to 
man — these  Biblia. 

The  life  of  George  Washington  is  a  myth  as  it 
is  read  to-day.  The  life  of  Abraham  Lincoln  is 
fast  becoming  a  myth.  No  historian  has  dared  to 
tell  us,  or  ever  will  dare  to  tell  us,  the  real  story 
of  these  two  lives. 

The  life  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte  is  getting  itself 
republished,  with  the  republication  advertised  in 
all  the  papers,  as  a  new  and  more  rational  form 


28  PERSONALITY  OF  MAN. 

of  the  Napoleonic  myth,  which  it  is  proposed  to 
impose  on  civilized  consciousness  in  lieu  of  the 
"  Sunday-school  teacher  and  member  of  the  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association  "  myth  which  Dr.  Ab- 
bott wrote  out,  when  I  was  younger,  in  Harper's 
Magazine,  to  the  fatal  misleading  of  the  mind  of 
one  generation  in  the  United  States. 

I  mean  to  say  no  writer  of  the  life  of  Washing- 
ton, Lincoln,  Grant,  Jefferson,  Bonaparte,  or  Wel- 
lington would  dare  to  write  the  true  life  of  any  one 
of  them,  as  this  Biblia  writes  out  the  life  of  Abra- 
ham, Jacob,  Moses,  or  David. 

Therefore  they  are  human,  and  therefore  false. 
They  are  not  inspired.  An  inspired  story  is  the 
only  true  story  ever  written,  or  ever  capable  of 
being  written,  because  written  from  the  overworld 
oifact — just  plain,  bald,  shameless,  sometimes  hor- 
rible fact.  Every  mere  z/^-inspired  writer,  infidel 
or  believer,  pagan  or  Christian,  feels  it  bounden 
on  him  to  deny  or  pass  over  facts. 

There  is  no  man  who  would  dare  to  put  in  print 
the  life  of  any  man,  or  his  own  life,  as  this  most 
inexorable  writer  writes  down  the  life  of  Jacob  and 
other  people,  under  the  cold  mercilessness  of  fact, 
which  is  just  revelation — fact,  the  thing  that  is,  re- 
lieved from  your  poor  beclouded  conceptions  of 


PERSONALITY  OF  A/AM.  29 

what  you  think  the  fact  ought  to  be,  or  even  now 
might  be,  if  eternal  God  would  only  take  your 
advice ! 

Secular  history  is  a  collection  of  myths.  We 
can  see  that  in  our  own  experience.  There  is  not 
a  man  who  has  passed  from  our  land  during  even 
the  last  half- century  whose  real  life  exists  in  any 
history. 

As  soon  as  even  a  small  member  of  our  Con- 
gress is  dead,  his  fellow-members  hold  a  session 
over  him,  and  a  half-dozen  gentlemen  elocutionize 
about  him  and  formulate  a  mythus  officialis!  Of 
course,  being  a  small  person,  the  myth-faith  ex- 
tends only,  as  a  rule,  to  his  wife  and  children; 
and  they,  in  spite  of  their  own  knowledge  that  he 
was  small — very  small  indeed — accept  and  are  de- 
lighted with  the  myth,  and  make  it  a  part  of  their 
household  worship. 

That  is  the  way  myths  are  made.  In  fact,  as 
far  as  my  personal  experience  and  knowledge  go, 
I  should  say  that,  by  account  of  writers  and  biog- 
raphers, gentlemen  whom  I  have  known — and 
some  of  them  intimately — have  never  existed  on 
this  earth  at  all ;  and  that  those  I  thought  I  knew 
best  were  shadowy  ghosts  waving  white  arms  on 
misty  mountain  summits  in  some  far  land  to  which 


30  PERSONALITY  OF  MAN 

no  man  has  ever  gone,  and  from  which  (it  might 
be  inferred)  no  man  has  ever  come. 

The  only  hard,  practical,  unmythical  history  or 
biography  in  all  literature  is  contained  in  these  old 
Biblia  the  church  holds  "inspired." 

So  the  hero  Jacob  has  all  his  life  told  out  no 
concealment,  no  reticence,  no  invented  or  stolen 
pretty  story  like  that  about  George  Washington 
and  his  hatchet ;  no  glossing  over  of  his  sins  or  his 
family's  sins. 

At  this  time  he  is  on  his  way  returning  to  his 
own  land  under  what  he  chooses  to  consider  the 
commandment  of  God. 

It  is  not  in  his  day  only  that  men  think  their 
own  desires,  or  what  looks  like  their  own  profit,  is 
the  commandment  of  God ! 

Numbers  of  us,  and,  curiously,  the  more  pious 
of  us,  always  are  apt  to  hold  our  own  decisions  for 
the  commandment  of  God.  Especially  when  we 
have  prayed  over  the  matter,  and  asked  for  light, 
we  are  very  sure  we  have  that  commandment ! 

I  was  once  consulted  by  a  gentleman  who  was 
greatly  troubled  in  his  mind,  almost  to  the  brink 
of  black  doubt,  because  in  a  change  he  meant  to 
make  in  his  business  he  had  made  the  subject  a 
matter,  as  he  told  me,  of  earnest  prayer,  and  he 


PERSONALITY  OF  MAN  31 

was  clear,  after  that,  that  it  was  God's  will  that 
he  make  the  change,  and  behold,  the  change  had 
resulted  in  the  loss  of  half  his  fortune !  He  was 
very  much  annoyed  about  it — even  somewhat 
indignant  with  God  about  it! 

I  suggested  that  the  Lord  had  left  him,  in  all 
that  kind  of  action,  to  decide  for  himself,  having 
given  him  presumable  sense,  and  allowed  him  a 
tolerable  education  and  some  experience  in  his 
special  business ;  and  that  if  I  were  in  his  place  I 
would  not  be  angry  with  the  Almighty  because 
He  declined  to  go  into  the  wholesale  grocery 
business  with  me  for  money  in  another  part  of  the 
country. 

I  have  no  doubt  of  this  man  Jacob's  sincerity. 
That  is  all  the  record  vouches  for.  He  believed 
he  was  commanded,  and  therefore,  as  far  as  he 
was  concerned,  having  a  conscience  illuminated  up 
to  its  capacities,  he  was  commanded  to  return  to 
his  kindred  and  his  father's  house.  But  he  has 
some  lessons  to  learn,  which  will  split  that  very 
poor  conscience  wider  open  before  he  is  much 
older.  Esau,  the  wronged  brother,  has  to  be  met 
and  settled  with  somehow.  Every  wrong  done 
has  to  be  settled  at  the  last ! 

So,  as  he  approaches  the  border  of  the  land  to- 


32  PERSONALITY  OF  MAN. 

ward  which  he  travels,  he  sends  messengers  to  the 
brother.  The  brother  has  prospered,  in  his  way, 
too.  Those  outside  "  the  covenant"  prosper,  as 
this  world  goes,  observe,  as  well  as  those  inside. 
The  elder  brother  has  taken  his  own  line,  and  he 
is  what  we  would  call  now  a  Bedouin  chief  and  a 
man  of  considerable  consequence.  He  can  march 
at  the  head  of  four  hundred  armed  men !  A  very 
important  brother  if  one  have  played  the  knave 
with  him! 

He  had  chosen  his  course  also ;  the  man  of  the 
fields,  the  desert,  and  the  mountains;  the  hunter, 
the  warrior,  the  desert  prince — driven  from  home 
by  the  mother  who  could  not  understand  and  never 
loved  her  strong,  rude,  but  tender  elder  son,  with 
the  old  fiery  Abrahamic  blood  in  him — he  too  had 
prospered,  and  he  was  coming  to  meet  the  brother 
who  had  cheated  him  and  mocked  his  father's 
blindness  and  age. 

Angry  ?  I  should  think  so !  The  desert  prince 
comes  to  meet  the  fawning,  intriguing,  smooth- 
tongued brother  who  had  chosen  flocks  and  herds 
instead  of  honor  and  manliness,  and  had  cheated 
him  out  of  his  highest,  if  only  his  ideal,  pos- 
session. 

So  Jacob  prays  again ;  thanks  God  for  his  sue- 


PERSONALITY  OF  MAN  33 

cess :  "  With  my  staff  I  passed  over  this  Jordan ; 
and  now  I  am  become  two  bands" — makes  God, 
that  is,  the  partner  in  all  his  knavery  with  Laban, 
and  thanks  Him  that  He  has  helped  his  trickery 
to  a  great  fortune ! 

Is  it  all  passed  away  ?  I  think  I  have  heard 
gentlemen  thanking  God  for  the  success  already 
attained,  and  praying  for  further  success — pious 
gentlemen,  who  paid  tithes  even — and  who  hon- 
estly believed  that  they  and  their  knavish  ways 
were  under  direct  protection  and  direction  of 
Almighty  God  because  they  decorously  attended 
church  and  paid  their  pew-rents. 

The  Old  Testament  is  still  a  part  of  the  reve- 
lation— an  essential  part.  We  cannot  dispense 
with  it,  even  if  Moses  did  not  write  this  particu- 
lar book,  nor  Isaiah  that  special  chapter.  It  is 
such  a  particularly  close,  practical,  revealing  book ! 
Such  a  true-to-man  book,  and  therefore  such  a 
true-to-God  book! 

The  character  of  the  younger  son  of  Isaac  re- 
mains such  a  genuine  character,  for  four  thousand 
years,  of  religious  people,  and  of  prosperous  men 
"  chosen  of  God,"  that,  having  been  true  for  so 
many  centuries,  and  nobody  disputing  the  fact  that 
it  is  true  now,  I  am,  as  it  were,  obliged  to  be- 


34  PERSONALITY  OF  MAN. 

lieve  that  no  popular  novel-writer  in  an  illustrated 
magazine  of  ancient  Syria  could  have  invented  it! 
There  is  no  human  experience  that  makes  such 
zvriters  possible.  All  human  experience  makes 
the  character  possible,  permanent,  familiar,  and  all 
alive  with  us  now. 

The  man's  arrangements  to  meet  his  wronged 
and  outraged  brother  are  entirely  natural  from  his 
character.  He  sends  "  presents  "  before  him.  The 
desert  free-lances  are  always  hungry.  They  have 
been  hungry  for  four  thousand  years !  The  sheep 
and  cattle  will  appease  him.  Three  cattle-droves 
with  herdsmen,  all  to  repeat  the  same  abject  lie, 
"  A  present  for  my  lord  Esau,  from  his  servant 
Jacob,"  are  to  meet  the  chief  and  his  hungry 
horde.  The  capitalist  Jacob  offers  that  kind  of 
blackmail  which  capital,  in  its  supreme  need,  will 
always  abjectly  pay  to  dinnerless  force.  The  world 
is  a  very  young  world  after  all — in  its  babyhood,  I 
think.  We  have  scarce  advanced  in  very  vital 
things  for  forty  centuries. 

The  capitalist  was  a  coward — we  say  still  that 
"  capital  is  timid."  The  capitalist  himself  is  timid, 
fearful,  cowardly.  Several  of  them  have  volun- 
tarily exiled  themselves  in  these  last  years  from 
iiur  own  peaceful,  happy,  and  prosperous  land. 


PERSONALITY  OF  MAN  35 

When  blackmail  must  be  paid  it  is  a  very  shak- 
ing time  for  the  capitalist,  and  this  man  of  ours  is 
scared.  He  is  worse — he  is  an  abject  coward.  He 
sends  his  presents  before  him,  then  his  cattle  and 
servants,  then  his  wives  and  children. 

The  story  is  a  very  pitiful  one.  The  whole 
conduct  of  the  man  is  unmanly,  fawning,  mean, 
and  lying — the  only  kind  of  bearing  which  wealth 
in  the  last  battle  can  oppose  to  force.  It  is  all 
very  low. 

When  all  had  passed  over  the  ford  of  the  brook 
Jabbok,  this  man  remained  alone,  far  from  the 
danger  before  him. 

The  night  was  one  of  fear  and  trembling. 
"Jacob  was  left  alone."  His  cowardice  com- 
pelled him  to  be  alone.  Once  again  in  the  si- 
lences, once  more  under  the  watching  stars!  The 
old  memories  come  back  to  him :  the  tent  of  his 
father;  the  sports  of  his  boyhood,  the  face  of  the 
brother  he  had  loved  and  with  whom  he  had 
shared  them;  his  beautiful  mother's  eyes  upon 
them  both ;  his  stately  father's  presence,  serene 
always,  and  always  princely,  whom  now,  tottering 
under  his  century  of  wintry  years,  he  is  soon  to 
meet.  He  and  the  brother  he  had  wronged  alone 
left  to  close  the  eyes  of  the  blind  chieftain  of  their 


36  PERSONALITY  OB   MAN. 

race,  and  they,  wronger  and  wronged !  They  two 
alone  in  all  the  world  of  the  legitimate  seed  of  the 
great  prince  and  sage — "  the  friend  of  God." 

It  was  an  hour  of  heart-searching  for  this  man. 
Flocks,  herds,  servants,  family — all  his  wealth 
might  have  already  vanished  before  the  wild  chil- 
dren of  the  waste  and  their  fierce  lord,  for  aught 
he  knew,  and  he  left,  as  when  he  fled  a  score  of 
years  before. 

Conscience  comes  to  close  quarters  with  a  man 
at  such  a  time.  Jacob's  conscience,  you  may  be 
sure,  was  busy  with  him.  In  the  few  strong 
strokes  which  paint  the  scene  this  lies  outlined. 
The  worth  of  his  life,  its  hard,  uncompromising 
reality,  comes  to  him.  He  takes  stock  of  himself. 
It  is  in  such  supreme  moments  that  a  man  is 
compelled  to  weigh  his  own  worth  and  the  worth 
of  his  life.  In  the  dark  of  the  world  he  sees,  in  the 
silence  of  the  loneliness  he  hears. 

But  a  man,  in  the  hour  that  shakes  his  soul  to 
its  center,  has  not  alone  his  own  conscience  to 
deal  with.  "  God  is  greater  than  our  heart,  and 
knoweth  all  things."  Settle  with  myself  as  I 
may,  how  shall  I  settle  with  another?  There  is 
immanent  in  conscience  another  Man,  a  strange 
Man,  not  myself,  not  any  other  man  I  ever  knew ; 


PERSONALITY  OF  MAN 


37 


awful,  singular,  lonely,  and  yet  persistently  near. 
I  must  also  settle  with  Him! 

"  What  shall  I  do  then  with  Jesus  which  is  called 
Christ?"  cried  Pilate,  in  mortal  terror,  ages  after 
this.  "  What  shall  I  do  with  this  strange  Man, 
who  comes  and  goes  about  me  and  about  my 
fathers,  who  is  the  eternal  measure  and  rule  of 
righteousness?  How  stand  I  with  Him,  and  what 
shall  I  say  to  Him?  " 

It  is  the  mystic  question  heard  on  all  the  winds 
of  Palestina,  heard  in  all  the  solemn  silences  of 
time.  This  Man,  immanent,  present  at  any  hour, 
shadowy  in  dreams,  plain  at  Abraham's  tent-door, 
forever  ready  to  judge,  forever  ready  to  help! 
The  eternal  presence  of  this  Man  walks  the  hills 
of  the  world  in  these  old  Biblia! 

And  He  is  here  on  Peniel.  "  There  wrestles  a 
Man  with  him  until  the  breaking  of  the  day." 

It  is  grim  and  awful  to  come  to  grips  with  this 
Man.  But  the  lonely  man  is  going  to  have  it  out 
once  for  all.  The  hour  is  a  supreme  hour.  Here 
and  henceforth  it  must  be  blessing  or  cursing. 

"  Let  Me  go,  for  the  day  breaketh,"  cries  the 
Wrestler.  Already  the  lances  of  the  sun  flash  red 
upon  the  hills.  The  night-fears,  and  the  wrestle  of 
lonely  self-examination,  and  the  bitterness  of  si- 


38  PERSONALITY  OF  MAN 

lence  with  one's  own  soul  will  fade  into  the  cares 
and  fears  of  the  breaking  day.     "  Let  Me  go." 

The  man  must  have  grown  wonderfully.  He  is 
changing  fast.  Already  he  is  lame.  The  strange 
midnight  Antagonist  has  touched  him.  He  is 
branded,  and  shall  stay  branded  all  his  life.  Yet, 
"  I  will  not  let  Thee  go,  except  Thou  bless  me!" 
"What  is  thy  name?"  Mark  the  question.  A 
name  describes.  In  old  days  they  were  always 
given  to  describe,  to  reveal  character,  to  tell  what 
the  man,  the  animal,  or  the  thing  is  in  its  utmost 
purpose  and  meaning.  This  man's  name  did  re- 
veal. His  name  rang  true.  "  He  said,  Jacob" — 
supplanter,  knave,  defrauder,  cheat! 

And  then  clangs  out  to  the  rising  dawn  and 
the  crimson  spears  of  the  hosts  of  the  morning  the 
blessing :  "  Thy  name  shall  be  called  no  more 
Jacob,  but  Israel  " — prince  of  God !  Let  the 
new  day  hear  the  new  name.  "  The  night  is  far 
spent,  the  day  is  at  hand." 

All  the  long  night  of  the  ages  man  has  wrestled 
with  the  awful,  eternal,  omnipotent  Man — wrestled 
undismayed,  with  straining  limbs  and  palpitating 
muscles  and  throbbing  heart,  all  the  night  of  doubt 
and  fear,  of  pain  of  memory  and  stings  of  con- 
science. 


PERSONALITY  OF  MAN.  39 

Lamed  by  the  mighty  touch,  branded  forever 
by  the  finger  of  the  awful  Wrestler  they  have 
dared  to  grasp;  yet  because  He  is  a  Man  they 
have  wrestled  on,  and  behold,  the  cry  tingles  to 
the  fleeing  starlight  of  time,  and  peals  in  the  vast 
halls  of  the  abiding  morning,  "  Thy  name  is  prince 
of  God"! 

I  am  not  going  to  attack,  sneer  at,  or  despise 
my  own  day.  It  is  good  enough  for  me  and  you 
— perhaps  better  than  we  deserve.  But  I  should 
sneer  at  it  and  belittle  it,  and  tell  it  to  go  about 
its  wretched  business  and  betake  itself  to  the  limbo 
of  all  things  forgotten  in  any  sane  universe,  if  I 
believed  it  for  one  moment  to  be  only  what  its 
current  talk  and  writing  makes  it. 

Man  must  have  his  Mahanaims,  where  the 
angels  of  God  meet  him.  He  must  have  his 
Peniels,  where  he  meets  God  face  to  face  and 
lives.  He  must  have  his  nights  of  wrestling,  and 
bear  the  brand  of  the  awful  touch  burned  into  him 
body  and  soul,  or  he  has  not  reached  man's  sta- 
tion in  this  world — the  place  God  has  prepared 
for  him. 

And  mark :  to  get  that — there  is  no  vagueness 
about  it — he  must  tell  his  name.  The  small  per- 
sonality, the  finite  individuality,  has  its  own  abid- 


40  PERSONALITY  OF  MAN 

ing  permanence,  and  must  stand  by  itself,  endure 
toil,  weep  and  rejoice  by  itself. 

The  secret  of  the  burden  and  sorrow  of  our 
years  is  that  we  must  say  "1." 

No  wonder  the  poor  Buddhist  prays  for  Nirvana 
— just  to  drop  into  the  infinite  ocean  and  be  lost, 
and  leave  all  oughts  and  responsibilities  behind 
one  forevermore! 

But  this  terrible  religion  of  the  Old  Testament 
and  the  New  keeps  on,  as  it  has  kept  on  for  all 
these  awful  centuries  of  human  story,  insisting  on 
the  "I."  "What  is  thy  name?"  What  is  thy 
meaning?  What  is  thy  character?  What  art 
thou  doing?  Naming  men,  individualizing  men 
out  of  all  combinations  and  associations,  insisting 
on  the  individual,  and  demanding  that  the  individ- 
ual shall  answer  for  himself. 

I  do  not  know  in  what  personality  consists.  I 
am  aware  that  many  philosophers  think  they  do 
know  and  could  make  their  knowledge  clear  to  me 
were  it  not  for  my  own  stupidity.  I  regret  that 
stupidity  profoundly.  But  it  is  not  so  great  as  to 
conceal  from  me  this :  that  personality  is  the  most 
wonderful  and  awful  thing  in  this  whole  universe, 
as  far  as  I  can  see ;  and  that  while  I  know  as  little 
about  its  essence  as  I  do  about  the  essence  of  any- 


PERSONALITY  OF  MAN.  41 

thing  else,  the  personality,  the  I-ism,  of  the  beggar 
is  a  loftier  thing  than  Chimborazo,  and  a  more 
beautiful  and  terrible  thing  than  Niagara  with  all 
its  thunder  and  its  foam. 

I  know,  too,  that  it  is  in  the  eclipse,  in  the  hour 
of  destiny  and  the  dark,  that  the  personality  stands 
most  sharply  cut  in  white  or  black,  and  that  the 
terrible  "  I  "  paints  itself  upon  the  heavens  in  glory 
or  in  shame. 

For  the  world  is  an  awful  world  after  all.  No 
man  would  ever  have  been  fool  enough  to  live  in 
it,  I  think,  if  he  had  been  given  the  choice. 

It  is  a  dreadful,  just,  far-searching,  and  testing 
world,  where  no  tares  will,  under  any  supposition, 
produce  wheat,  and  no  thistles  bear  grapes. 

And  this,  not  because  it  is  itself  unchangeable — 
for  it  spins  like  a  top  through  measureless  space 
— but  because  there  are  "  I's  "  upon  it  which  are 
not  of  it,  which  amid  its  changes  are  changeless, 
amid  its  passings  permanent,  and  amid  its  deaths 
immortal ;  and  who,  amid  its  harvests  of  a  summer, 
sow  and  reap  the  sheaves  of  eternity ! 

And  rising  from  all  its  voices,  of  the  night  or 
the  busy  day,  of  the  moaning  tides  or  the  sough- 
ing forests,  of  the  wind  in  the  long  prairie-grass 
or  the  roar  of  burning  pine-woods,  in  the  cry  of 


42  PERSONALITY  OF  MAN 

the  panther  watching  on  the  bending  bough  or 
the  song  of  the  thrush  in  the  thicket — from  all 
voices  of  star  and  sea  and  woodland  comes  the 
question  to  this  strange  wayfarer  whom  none  know, 
"What  is  thy  name?"  Nature  presses  him  with 
his  personality ;  torments  him  with  it ;  allows  him 
not  for  one  moment  to  forget  it  while  he  wakes; 
profanes  his  very  rest  in  sleep,  and  whispers  or 
thunders  in  his  dreams  to  scare :  "  Yes,  thou  art 
an  'I.'     What  is  thy  name?" 

Well,  we  might  even  endure  what  we  call  na- 
ture !  But  there  is  no  end.  We  ourselves  cry  to 
ourselves,  "What  is  thy  name?"  And  we  are 
dimly  conscious  that  there  is  somewhere  and  some- 
how a  Power  behind  all  powers,  out  of  space,  out 
of  time,  but  immanent  and  abiding  near  by  our 
side,  who,  at  any  hour  of  day  or  night,  in  blessing 
or  in  life-and-death  wrestle,  may  demand,  "  What 
is  thy  name  ?  "  The  consciousness  of  their  rela- 
tionship to  the  Powers  unseen,  gross  as  it  may  be 
among  some,  crude  as  it  is  among  all,  is  a  fact 
universal  among  all  who  say  "  I." 

But  that  this  Power  is  a  Person,  and  this  rela- 
tionship so  close  that  it  takes  the  form  of  clasping 
hands  and  straining  arms  and  laboring  muscles  in 
the  wrestle  for  life  and  lifting,  for  princedom  and 


PERSONALITY  OF  MAN  43 

for  crowning,  which  can  come  only  in  the  dawn- 
ing of  a  new  day — this  is  the  conviction  which 
scorches  the  human  wrestler  with  its  touch  of  fire, 
brands  him  with  the  brand  of  the  infinite  and  eter- 
nal Personality  which  declares  him  His  own;  in 
the  doctrine  of  Divine  Evolution,  a  prince  and  son 
of  God! 


LECTURE   II. 
PERSONALITY   OF   GOD. 


45 


Wherefore  is  it  that  thou  dost  ask  after  My  name  ? 

Gen.  xxxii.  29. 


46 


LECTURE    II. 


PERSONALITY     OF    GOD. 


/TAHE  prayer  was  natural.  Jacob  had  given  his 
-*-  own  name.  Why  should  he  not  know,  also, 
the  name  of  this  strange  Antagonist?  That  He 
was  from  beyond  the  world  was  clear.  Some 
Power,  some  Existence  from  outside  the  common 
experience  and  life  of  men  had  been  wrestling  with 
him,  had  branded  him,  lamed  him,  at  last  blessed 
him,  and  made  him  a  prince  of  God.  That  the 
Man  was  no  man  of  his  measure  Jacob  was  sure 
without  an  answer. 

For  he  calls  the  name  of  the  place  Peniel — "  the 
face  of  God,"  the  face  of  one  of  the  Elohim  he  had 
looked  upon  and  yet  lived. 

But  what  was  His  name?  The  inmost  charac- 
ter, nature,  and  personality — what  was  that  ?  That 
He  was  a  Person  there  was  no  question.  Jacob 
was  sure  of  that.  And  he  got  no  answer.  Virtu- 
ally it  is,  "How  does  My  name  concern  thee? 
Why  askest  thou  after  My  name?  " 

47 


48  PERSONALITY  OF  GOD. 

And  this  night's  question  has  been  the  question 
of  humanity  always.  Jacob  spoke  for  all  men  and 
all  times. 

For  in  the  night  of  the  years,  on  the  lonely 
plains  of  time,  some  Power,  strange  and  awful, 
some  gigantic  Force  with  suggested  human  or 
celestial  semblance,  has  been  wrestling  for  good 
or  ill  with  men. 

In  the  long  years  of  bitter  struggle  in  which  men 
have  been  straining  toward  the  dawn,  some  Power 
beyond  their  own,  beyond  anything  from  the  earth, 
has  grasped  them,  dragged  them,  gripped  them,  to 
lame  or  to  bless ;  and  in  the  agony  of  the  wrestle 
the  passionate  cry  has  tingled  to  the  darkened 
skies,  "  Tell  me,  I  pray  Thee,  Thy  name." 

Who  is  it  that  governs  the  earth  and  men,  and 
conducts  the  processes  of  the  years?  For  our 
strength  avails  not,  nor  our  riches,  nor  our  wisdom. 
Still  the  world  is  an  awful  place  and  our  life  has 
awful  possibilities.  Ruin  waits  upon  the  march 
of  men,  and  ruin,  many  times,  from  the  hands  of 
brothers.  Plan  as  we  will,  our  plans  go  to  wreck 
by  the  stroke  of  a  Hand  out  of  the  darkness.  Build 
as  we  will,  and  our  towers  and  palaces  are  shivered 
by  a  blow  from  a  Hand  unseen.  The  mightiest 
growths  of  time  in  institutions,  in  laws,  in  constitu- 


PERSONALITY  OF  GOD.  49 

tions  and  social  order,  watched,  guarded,  buttressed 
by  all  care,  crumble  under  a  touch  we  know  not 
whence — the  touch  of  a  Hand  out  of  the  thick 
darkness. 

The  sense  of  the  mystery  that  inwraps  the  uni- 
verse ;  of  the  ever-present  mystery  that  clothes  and 
masters  human  life;  of  the  ever-brooding  Power 
that  dwells  in  the  dark  around  us,  closing  us  into 
our  small  span — small,  though  it  be  a  span  of  cen- 
turies— the  universal  sense  and  conviction,  which 
may  verify  itself  by  all  experience  till  the  instinct 
is  confirmed  by  the  calmness  of  a  rational  judg- 
ment, makes  atheism  impossible. 

It  is  no  longer  a  question  of  a  Power  that  rules, 
do  what  we  will,  do  what  all  men  will. 

Outside  there  in  the  dark  lies  Power.  Power 
that  whirls  the  generations  onward  as  the  cataract 
whirls  the  brown  leaves  in  the  rushing  November 
spate — that  all  men,  savage,  civilized,  ignorant  or 
wise,  feel  to  the  marrow  of  their  bones. 

You  may  gather  in  one  congress  the  statesman- 
like wisdom  and  controlling  guidance  of  the  earth, 
and  the  wisest-laid  plan  formulated  and  decided 
upon,  every  man  present  knows,  and  every  thought- 
ful man  besides  knows,  may  be  blown  like  a  thistle- 
down upon  the  wind  that  rises  and  rushes  onward 


50  PERSONALITY  OF  GOD. 

from  the  awful  hills  where  the  unseen  Powers  drive 
their  chariots  of  the  dark  or  the  dawn. 

"  The  wisdom  of  this  world  is  foolishness  with 
God."  "  He  taketh  the  wise  in  their  own  crafti- 
ness." He  charges  the  loftiest  imaginable  intelli- 
gence with  folly.  The  old  Hebrew  speech  carries 
the  conviction  of  the  ages. 

No,  it  is  not  a  question  of  a  Power  straining  and 
wrestling  with  human  nature  from  the  beginning, 
and  branding  or  blessing  it.  There  has  not  been 
a  race  of  men  discovered  yet  that  has  made  any 
question  of  such  a  Power.  And  we  may  be  sure 
that  the  higher  the  race  climbs,  the  farther  its  out- 
look over  the  loneliness,  the  more  it  will  confess 
the  insistence  and  persistence  of  this  Power. 

It  is  only  in  the  effervescence  of  early  youth, 
conceited  with  its  discoveries  and  its  rapid  gains, 
that  men  have  for  one  half-intoxicated  hour 
dreamed  that  they  could  rule  alone  and  gain  the 
daybreak  without  the  wrestle ! 

Such  a  wild  hour  came,  and  naturally  very  early 
— before  the  Flood — when  there  were  giants  upon 
the  earth,  and  a  whole  new  world  lay  open  for  the 
conquest  of  the  race  in  its  prime.  God  had  turned 
them  loose  to  conquer ;  and  they  conquered — those 
demigods  of  the  elder  day — in  a  way  of  whose 


PERSONALITY  OF  GOD.  51 

magnificence  we  can  scarcely  dream,  I  think, 
while  we  find  the  mighty  ruins  of  their  glory  un- 
derlying our  oldest  civilizations.  But  the  Power 
they  had  forgotten,  in  the  long  reaches  of  human 
life  and  human  triumph,  lay  yet  behind,  and  the 
unseen  Forces  burst  upon  the  earth  in  its  pro- 
foundest  security,  and  "swept  them  all  away." 
The  story  of  the  Flood  has  deeper  meanings  in  it, 
I  think,  than  any  likely  to  emerge  in  the  mere 
physical  discussions  about  it — meanings  which  will 
yet  flash,  I  doubt  not,  into  light  and  leading,  as 
truths  abiding  forever  in  an  ethical  world. 

No,  the  question  is  not  about  the  existence  of 
the  Power.  It  is  about  its  nature  and  its  mean- 
ing.     "Tell  me  Thy  name." 

It  is  a  present,  living  cry  to-day  in  every  living 
land  of  living  men.  It  lies  at  the  base  of  all 
questions,  and  is  the  first  demand  of  all  thinking. 
All  philosophies,  all  religions,  all  governments 
and  social  life,  all  laws,  all  business  among  men, 
have  their  rise  out  of  this  demand — as  old  as 
man,  as  abiding  as  time,  perhaps  as  eternal  as 
eternity. 

For  it  means,  "Tell  me  the  world's  meaning; 
tell  me  mine  own.  Tell  me  life's  purpose,  and 
death's.    Tell  me  what  time  is,  and  eternity;  what 


52 


PERSONALITY  OF  GOD. 


right  is,  and  wrong;  what  truth  is,  and  lies.     Tell 
me  what  heaven  is,  and  hell!" 

For  to  know  the  Master  of  the  universe,  the 
Power  that  lies  behind  all  power  and  that  builds 
and  destroys  as  it  will,  is  to  tell  man  all  things, 
that  he  may  give  names  like  the  Son  of  God. 

It  is  no  cry  of  curiosity  only.  It  comes  less 
from  the  intellect  than  from  the  heart.  God  pity 
the  man  who  has  only  seen  in  it  a  question  of 
philosophy  for  his  study  and  his  metaphysics! 
That  men  do  so  treat  it  is  one  of  the  most  pitiable 
things  I  know  in  the  story  of  human  intelligence. 
It  never  has  gotten  an  answer,  put  as  a  curious 
question,  and  it  never  will.  "  By  searching  canst 
thou  find  out  God?" — by  search  of  intellect,  the 
same  curious  search  that  finds  out  the  nature  and 
gives  the  name  to  a  beetle! 

I  say  it  is  humanity's  cry.  But  not  out  of  its 
brain,  not  from  its  study.  It  is  a  cry,  a  passionate 
prayer,  to  the  dark  and  the  dawn,  to  the  night  on 
which  the  blood-red  banners  of  the  unknown  day 
are  even  now  advancing,  from  the  knees,  from  the 
lamed  and  worn  wrestler  in  the  midnight  mystery, 
half- dream,  half- waking,  of  time — a  pitiful  cry  and 
a  prayer:  "Tell  me  Thy  name." 

Art  Thou  good?     Art  Thou  evil?     Art  Thou 


PERSONALITY  OF  GOD.  53 

neither?     Art  Thou  good  to-day,  evil  to-morrow? 
Blessest  Thou  by  night,  cursest  Thou  by  day  ? 

From  the  trampled  battle-plain,  where  the  dy- 
ing moan  and  the  dead  look  with  blind  eyes  to  a 
dumb  heaven — "  Tell  me  Thy  name."  From  a  city 
wrecked  by  fire,  and  gutters  reeking  with  blood 
— "  Tell  me  Thy  name." 

From  cities  rich  and  fair,  where  stately  homes 
mock  the  splendors  and  the  ease  of  the  barbaric 
kings  of  old ;  where  also  the  starving  mother  holds 
to  her  dying  heart  for  warmth  the  freezing  child, 
that  shall  be  found  dead  there  in  the  morning — 
"  Tell  me  Thy  name. "  From  Christian  cities  where 
fifty  thousand  dollars  a  year  is  counted  respecta- 
ble poverty,  and  where  men  and  women  starve  in 
hovels  notwithstanding,  and  children  grow  up  half 
human  in  noisome  filth  and  hopeless  misery,  not 
man  only,  but  the  overlooking  angels,  with  angelic 
tears,  cry,  "  Tell  me  Thy  name." 

When  the  land  waves  yellow  with  its  bending 
harvests,  and  the  summer  light  sleeps  golden  in 
the  orchards  and  the  woodlands ;  when  the  happy 
homes  of  men  stand  thick  over  all  the  happy  land, 
one  answers  the  cry.  It  is  a  lovely  world ;  the 
birds  sing  in  the  branches,  the  bees  hum  in  the 
flowers,  the  white  sails  glimmer  from  light  to  dark 


54  PERSONALITY  OF  GOD. 

along  the  brimming  river,  the  harvestman  sings  as 
he  gathers  in,  the  sun  sinks  from  a  happy  day,  the 
yellow  moon  throws  up  her  golden  shield  upon  the 
breast  of  a  happy  night — "Tell  me  Thy  name." 

The  answer  seems  easy :  "  Thy  name  is  good- 
ness." 

But  look  again.  The  floods  are  out!  The  har- 
vests are  whirled  away !  Down  the  flood  rush  the 
results  of  the  summer's  toil  in  mingled  ruin  of 
homes  and  barns  and  stacks,  of  beasts  and  cattle ; 
and  the  valley  is  a  desolation. 

There  is  something  still  to  come.  The  bodies  of 
men  and  women  and  little  children  swirl  down  in 
the  whirling  flood.     "  Tell  me  Thy  name  now." 

Oh,  so  many  homes  of  men !  So  many  happy 
homes  of  happy  men!  The  shouts  of  children  in 
the  streets!  The  rose-grown  cottage  door!  The 
stately  mansion  amid  its  gardens  and  its  greenery ! 
The  cry  of  sailors  in  the  ships!  The  clank  of 
hammers  and  the  hum  of  wheels!  The  cheerful 
faces  in  the  sunny  streets!  The  friendly  words 
from  lips  of  friends !  The  lighted  windows  in  the 
gloaming!  The  music  through  the  open  doors! 
The  happy  moon  and  stars  looking  down  on  all! 
"Tell  me  Thy  name." 

Behold,  the  bells  toll,  the  death-cart  rumbles 


PERSONALITY  OF  GOD.  55 

through  the  silent  streets,  the  diggers  dig  hasty 
graves !  The  cottage  door,  the  palace  door,  wear 
crape.  Under  the  brazen  sunlight,  under  the  piti- 
less moonlight,  the  pestilence  is  abroad,  and  Death 
reaps  his  awful  harvest.      "  Tell  me  Thy  name." 

It  is,  I  have  said,  an  awful  world,  and  a  terrible 
life,  take  it  at  its  best.  A  few  days  of  shine,  many 
days  of  gray  clouds  and  rain.  A  little  fairness  of 
balmy  mornings,  many  storms  of  lashing  sleet  and 
freezing  hail.  Out  of  the  dark,  into  the  dark 
again,  and  our  poor  little  story  is  told,  and  the 
world  of  living  men  knows  our  names  no  more. 

There  is  a  possibility  of  what  is  called  "  opti- 
mism." That  the  possibility  of  the  blackest  "  pes- 
simism "  lives  beside  it  has  overwhelming  and 
shocking  evidence  in  the  self-destroyers,  who  seek 
by  their  own  hands  to  escape  the  hell  of  this  pres- 
ent life,  at  the  risk  of  the  hell  of  any  other. 

The  years  grow  more  serious  as  they  go  on. 
A  boy  dances  along  the  road  one  morning  gaily 
enough.  How  sweet  a  thing  just  to  be  alive!  A 
man  sits  by  a  desolate  hearth  one  night,  and  the 
eyes  of  the  boy,  his  first-born  and  his  pride,  are 
closed  forever  on  this  earth  in  the  room  beyond. 
The  leaping  feet  lie  pale  and  still  and  ice-cold 
side  by  side.     He  has  tried  all  human  skill.     He 


56  PERSONALITY  OF  GOD. 

has  used  all  resources  of  knowledge  and  wealth. 
He  is  a  man  who  believes  in  God,  too,  and  he  has 
prayed  for  the  life  that  has  gone.  He  has  wrestled 
with  God  for  it.  You  tell  him  he  must  submit. 
Of  course  he  must!  His  pastor  comes  and  tells 
him  he  otigJit  to  submit.  Ah,  that  is  quite  another 
matter ! 

He  is  down  among  the  grim  things  of  life's  utter 
loneliness — the  old  gaunt,  gray,  ancient  questions 
which  man  has  found  ever  new  since  his  first  child 
lay  dead.  Conventionalities  count  for  little.  Do 
you  wonder  he  cries  out  in  the  night  the  old  cry 
of  humanity?  The  beggar's  boy  is  living;  the 
little  barefoot  gutter-snipe  runs  by  his  door.  The 
ragged  little  wretches  will  throng  to  see  the  show 
when  his  son  is  carried  out  to-morrow.  He  is  a 
reticent  American — one  of  the  race  that  "  always 
grimly  accepts  the  inevitable."  His  eyes  are  dry. 
He  will  sustain  calmly  to-morrow  the  drooping 
figure  of  his  boy's  mother  in  decorous  fashion,  as 
becomes  him.  He  will  return  the  day  after  to  his 
office,  and  seat  himself  as  usual  at  his  business,  and 
give  no  sign.  But  to-night  and  to-morrow  night 
and  many  a  lonely  night  thereafter  the  cry  rings 
all  the  more  terribly  out  of  the  dark  of  his  silent  and 
lonely  wrestle,  "  Tell  me  Thy  name."    "  What  kind 


PERSONALITY  OF  GOD. 


57 


of  Power  is  it — good  or  bad,  divine  or  diabolic — 
that  has  gotten  me  and  my  life  in  its  pitiless  grasp  ?  " 

But  it  is  not  merely  loss  of  one's  dearest,  the 
sore  pain  and  bitterness  of  life  which  comes  from 
outside  a  man,  even  from  his  nearest. 

The  awful  endowment  of  personality  needs  not 
for  its  profoundest,  grimmest  wrestling-pain  any 
stroke  from  without. 

A  man  sits  alone  with  himself.  He  needs  no 
coffined  form  of  dearest  child  or  tenderest  wife  or 
heart's  close  brother  across  the  threshold.  He  is 
sufficient  to  himself  when  he  enters  the  awful 
chambers  of  darkness,  where  his  own  past,  his  own 
present,  his  very  self  sit  down  beside  him  and 
question  him. 

God  help  the  poor,  starved,  cowardly,  aborted 
"  I  "  who  has  not  gone  off  alone,  with  the  coffined 
dead  of  his  own  murdered  resolutions,  the  living 
ghosts  of  his  own  sins  and  failures,  and  has  not 
dared  to  look  the  ghastly  dead  and  the  ghastly 
living  squarely  in  the  face! 

Where  the  "  I  "  is  strongest,  where  the  "  name  " 
is  answered  to  the  call  and  question  most  emphat- 
ically, there  only  is  the  darkness  darkest,  and  the 
awfulness  most  awful,  in  the  wrestle  that  breaks 
the  bones  and  blasts  the  sinews. 


58  PERSONALITY  OF  GOD. 

There  have  been  men  who  have  made  repen- 
tances not  to  be  repented  of ;  men  who  have  had 
opened  to  them  in  the  lonely  dark  the  lurid  fires  of 
God's  and  nature's  and  our  own  poor  world's  ever- 
lasting wrath  against  the  base,  the  foul,  the  false ! 

Yes,  there  have  been  true  repentances,  true 
wrestlings  with  conscience  and  the  eternal  verities, 
"  when  the  wickedness  of  a  man's  heels  have  com- 
passed him  about;"  when  not  man's  judgment, 
but  eternal  God's  has  blasted  him ;  when  he  has 
cried  in  agony  to  the  awful  Power  that  gripped 
the  heart  of  him,  "Tell  me  Thy  name." 

Man's  judgment,  man's  law,  man's  convention- 
alities, man's  praise  or  blame — what  are  these 
with  the  Power  that  has  strode  out  of  the  ever- 
lasting shadow  where  the  realities  hide,  straining 
me  in  His  terrible  hands!  My  poor  conceits,  my 
wretched  speculations  about  religion,  my  senti- 
mental woes,  and  my  childish  whinings  because 
God  has  not  explained  to  my  babyishness  the 
mysteries  of  His  universe — where  are  these,  and 
what,  when  the  smoky  darkness  of  the  awful  night 
is  lit  only  by  lurid  faces  that  grotesquely  mock  my 
own,  and  while  the  overshadowing  Power  holds 
me,  accuses  me  of  all  I  have  been  and  all  I  am, 
and  my  own  conscience  records  the  accusation, 


PERSONALITY  OF  GOD,  59 

and  the  awful  whisper  moans  out  of  the  night, 
'a^apn^a  'aicoviov. 

Possible?     Yes,  possible — "eternal  sin." 

To  the  soul  who  has  gone  through  such  wrestle, 
what  wretched  babble  must  much  of  our  religious 
literature,  and  our  preachings  and  supposed  de- 
fenses of  the  faith,  be ! 

Let  us  be  thankful  if  we  ourselves  have  not 
wrestled  on  the  brink  of  eternal  hells  and  looked 
into  the  rolling  waves  of  eternal  sorrow.  But  men 
have  so  wrestled,  men  are  so  wrestling  now ;  and 
there  is  an  awful  grotesqueness  in  hearing  your  lily- 
handed,  dilettante  preacher  gesticulate  and  elocu- 
tionize his  charming  platitudes  melodiously — a 
boy,  perhaps,  who  has  never  known  a  sorrow  or  a 
repentance — for  the  edification  of  men  who  have 
wrestled  with  the  eternal  Powers  on  the  brink  of 
the  eternal  fires,  for  life,  for  help,  at  cost  of 
branded,  limping  body  and  limping  soul,  that  they 
may  escape1  'ajiapryjjia  'aiamov. 

The  answer  to  the  cry  in  Jacob's  case  was, 
"  Wherefore  is  it  that  thou  dost  ask  after  My 
name?"  No  reply  came,  no  explanation.  Has 
any  man,  to  his  intensest  prayer,  ever  yet  received 
an  answer? 

1  Mark  iii.  29. 


6o  PERSONALITY  OF  GOD. 

Our  library  shelves  are  filled  with  a  mass  of 
so-called  Natural  Theology  grown  utterly  mean- 
ingless. 

The  men  who  wrote  on  Natural  Religion,  and 
made  Christianity  a  supplement  or  an  extension, 
had  clearly  never  wrestled. 

They  were  dealing  with  questions  of  the  intel- 
lect alone.  There  is,  indeed,  a  Natural  Theology 
in  revelation.  "  The  heavens  declare  the  glory  of 
God;  and  the  firmament  showeth  His  handiwork." 
But  the  heavens  declare  and  the  firmament  shows 
only  to  him  who  already  believes  in  God,  and  that 
He  has  a  glory  and  has  a  handiwork. 

By  no  possible  examination,  by  no  closest  study 
of  what  we  call  "  nature  "  can  the  human  intellect 
answer  the  prayer,  "Tell  me  Thy  name." 

Is  "  the  Power  behind  phenomena"  a  name? 
All  men  have  acknowledged  a  Power  behind  phe- 
nomena. But  is  that  Power's  name  Terror  or  Joy  ? 
Is  it  Wrath  or  Pity?  Is  it  conscious  of  itself  or 
not?  Is  it  merely  electricity?  Has  it  any  moral 
quality  whatever?     Has  it  a  Personal  Name? 

And  if  our  speculations  on  the  phenomena  of 
nature  give  us  no  answer,  shall  it  profit  us  to  turn 
to  the  metaphysicians — the  human  spiders  who 
spin  out  of  themselves  those  vast  webs  of  words, 


PERSONALITY  OF  GOD.  6 1 

the  words  themselves  used  in  arbitrary  senses, 
which  tangle  up  the  intellect  in  a  confusion  like 
madness,  each  filmy  thread  promising  to  lead  the 
searcher  out  of  the  tangle  into  light,  while  he 
creeps  round  and  round  an  endless  labyrinth  of 
artificial  phrase  ?  The  "  ego  "  and  the  "  non-ego," 
the  "  absolute  "  and  the  "  related,"  the  "  unknow- 
able "  and  the  "  conditioned  "  !  Through  what 
a  maze  have  men  groped  since  the  vortices  of 
Descartes  even  to  our  day,  finding  only  words ! 

And  what  have  they  reached?  The  know- 
ledge or  the  name  of  the  Powers  that  wrestle  with 
humanity  ?  Is  He  one  or  many  ?  Has  He  an  in- 
dependent existence  at  all?  Is  He  conscious  of 
Himself,  if  He  be  a  self,  or  does  He  make  Himself 
conscious  only  in  His  creation?  Can  we  know 
Him,  or  does  He  even  know  Himself,  except 
in  us? 

The  wild  insanity  which  makes  men  think  the 
finite  can  define  the  Infinite,  that  the  human  in- 
tellect which  does  not  understand  what  itself  is  can 
construct  and  define  the  Eternal,  creeps  even  into 
theology  that  claims  to  be  revealed,  and  puts  down 
its  shallow  conclusions  as  eternal  verities. 

Take  our  First  Article  of  the  Thirty-nine.  It 
undertakes  to  define  God  philosophically  in  poor 


62  PERSONALITY  OF  GOD. 

babbling  speech;  to  give  us  the  definition  of  His 
character  and  nature — reverently  done,  of  course, 
by  reverent  Christian  men ;  and  yet  see  where  it 
lands  us  :  "  He  is  without  body,  parts,  or  passions." 
That  is  merely,  you  see,  the  definition  of  what 
men  think  God  ought  to  be,  what  they  have  de- 
cided He  must  be  out  of  their  own  thinking.  Go 
on !  Take  the  Second  Article,  wherein  God  tells 
for  Himself  some  little  about  Himself.  This  Be- 
ing, "  without  body,  parts,  or  passions,"  has  a  Son, 
"  very  God,  of  one  substance  with  the  Father," 
who  has  a  body,  even  a  human  body,  with  all  its 
passions,  hunger,  thirst,  weakness,  and  who  suffers 
"  the  passion  "  of  death  by  crucifixion.  That  is 
God's  account  about  Himself. 

For  unless  He  tell  us  His  name  we  cannot  find 
it.  And  from  the  first,  as  here  with  the  wrestling 
Jacob,  to  know  or  hear  His  name  we  must  get 
down  and  ask  Hun;  ask  Him  praying,  "Tell  me, 
I  pray  Thee,  Thy  name." 

We  here  are  all  agreed  as  to  one  name  of  this 
midnight  Wrestler.  We  recognize  Him  across  forty 
centuries  by  that  name,  and  yet,  strangely  enough, 
it  is  a  name  no  man  has  ever  uttered,  and  of  which 
no  man  knows  the  syllables. 

There  are,  in  various  places  of  Old  Testament 


PERSONALITY  OF  GOD.  63 

story,  accounts  of  the  appearance  upon  the  scene, 
and  always  to  deal  with  men,  of  a  Man  who  speaks, 
acts  as  a  man,  and  at  the  last  by  a  sudden  revela- 
tion and  conviction  (as  was  long  after  the  case  at 
Emmaus,  when  the  two  disciples  recognized  Him 
and  He  vanished  out  of  their  sight)  is  known  to 
be  God.  He  is  so  recognized  by  Israel :  "  I  have 
seen  God  face  to  face."  This  Man  appeared  to 
Abraham  as  "  he  sat  in  his  tent  door  in  the  heat 
of  the  day."  Abraham  talks  with  Him.  He  and 
two  with  Him  eat  with  Abraham ;  and  they  walk 
forth  together  and  talk  of  the  awful  woe  that  waits 
over  the  cities  on  the  plain  below,  and  Abraham 
pleads  with  Him,  and  calls  Him  by  a  name.  Long 
after  He  appears  to  Moses  in  the  flaming  acacia- 
bush  in  the  desert,  and  Moses  asks  His  name.  The 
name  is  a  strange  one — "  I  Am."  Again,  Moses 
begs  to  see  the  face  of  Him  who  gave  the  law  in 
the  mount.  God  covers  him  with  His  hand  in  a 
cleft  of  the  rock.  He  sees  Him  only  as  His  glory 
passes  by ;  "  for  there  shall  no  man  see  My  face, 
and  live."  And  yet  afterward,  by  the  walls  of 
beleaguered  Jericho,  Joshua  sees  a  Man  standing 
"  with  His  sword  drawn  in  His  hand."  And 
Joshua  goes  to  Him.  "  Art  Thou  for  us,  or  for 
our  adversaries  ?  "    "  Nay,"  is  the  answer ;  "  but  as 


64  PERSONALITY  OF  GOD. 

Captain  of  the  host  of  the  Lord  am  I  now  come.  .  .  . 
Loose  thy  shoe  from  off  thy  foot;  for  the  place 
whereon  thou  standest  is  holy  " — just  the  warning 
to  Moses  before. 

This  Man,  appearing,  disappearing,  speaking, 
warning,  revealing,  delivering,  judging,  is  always 
recognized  at  last,  worshiped,  and  called  upon  by 
a  name. 

No  man  can  tell  you  the  name.  But  wherever 
you  find  the  word  LORD  in  capital  letters  in  our 
English  version,  that  name  stands  in  the  Hebrew. 

I  say  no  man  knows  its  sound.  The  Hebrew 
never  uttered  it.  When  he  came  to  it  he  read 
another  word,  Adonai,  which  we  translate  "  Lord." 
The  other  is  the  "incommunicable  name" — the 
name  especially  peculiar  and  appropriate  to  the 
awful  God.  "  No  man  hath  seen  God  at  any  time ; 
the  only  begotten  Son,  .  .  .  He  hath  declared 
Him."  "  He  that  hath  seen  Me  hath  seen  the 
Father."  "  All  things  were  made  by  Him."  The 
mystic,  unutterable  four  Hebrew  consonants,  whose 
vowels  are  lost,  which  no  man  has  ever  spoken, 
spake  the  name  of  the  Man  who  talked  with  Abra- 
ham, wrestled  with  Jacob,  gave  the  law  through 
Moses,  drew  His  sword  by  the  walls  of  Jericho. 
Mark  now — for  that  is  the  point  of  the  argument 


PERSONALITY  OF  GOD.  65 

— He  is  a  Person.  He  has  a  name.  It  seems  the 
main  point  of  the  teaching,  the  purpose  of  all  those 
Old  Testament  revelations,  was  to  make  men  under- 
stand that  God  is  a  Person. 

There  shall  be  no  abstraction  set  before  them  to 
worship  under  vague  sign  and  symbol ;  no  Being 
or  mere  expression  of  power  or  of  justice,  much 
less  of  wrath  and  fury.  There  shall  be  a  definite 
conception  of  the  Power  invisible,  as  One,  and  as  a 
Man,  whatever  else  He  is,  with  a  drawing  toward 
men,  and  a  possible,  even  loving,  communion  with 
men.  He  shall  appear  as  a  Man,  and  give  His 
messages  as  a  Man,  and  walk  in  the  garden  in  the 
cool  of  the  day ;  and  yet  the  trailing  glory  of  His 
departure  shall  proclaim  the  Bearer  of  the  unknown 
name  "  of  the  mystic  letters  four." 

Yet  in  the  religion  thus  illuminated,  taught,  and 
impressed  there  shall  be  no  similitude.  I  dare  to 
say  it  is  unexplainable  by  any  thinkable  law  of 
development.  Why  did  not  the  children  carve  an 
image  of  the  Man  their  fathers  believed  to  be  God, 
and  set  it  up  as  a  memorial  ?  In  the  places  of  His 
appearing  it  is  the  rude  stone-heap,  the  cairn  or 
cromlech,  or  the  anointed  pillar  which  marks  the 
memorial.  But  "  make  no  similitude ;  take  heed 
to    yourselves " — "  no    likeness    of    anything    in 


66  PERSONALITY  OF  GOD. 

heaven,  or  in  earth,  or  in  the  water  under  the 
earth." 

The  Greek  did  it,  and  made  his  deities  persons, 
but  finite  persons,  with  more  power  of  hand  and 
brain,  but  shameless  of  all  passion  and  crime.  The 
Egyptian  believed  in  divine  personality,  and  taught 
it  in  monstrous  forms.  The  Hindu  did  the  same, 
and  in  forms  more  monstrous  and  more  bestial  tried 
to  realize  the  personality  of  the  Powers  spiritual. 

One  moves  through  these  Egyptian,  Assyrian, 
Hindu  personalities  divine  as  through  a  nightmare 
dream  of  hideous  faces  and  bestial  conceptions,  in 
a  madhouse  universe. 

The  vague  phantasms  of  the  brain,  Ormuzd  or 
Ahriman ;  the  formless,  shapeless,  shadowy  Brahm 
of  Eastern  pantheism  orWestern  dream  ;  the  Power 
that  is  no  Power  with  any  sense  but  what  it  finds 
in  its  own  creatures — even  these  cloud-vanishing 
phantasms  are  a  relief  from  the  dog- headed,  cat- 
headed,  elephant-headed  deities  in  which  the  na- 
ture-worshiper sought  to  express  the  personality 
of  the  invisible  Powers. 

Whence  got  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  that  bald 
and  bold  realism  which  personifies  God  as  a  Man, 
and  yet  never  mistakes  Him  for  a  mere  man  ?  which 
gives  Him  human  arms  and  hands  and  eyes  and 


PERSONALITY  OF  GOD.  6j 

heart,  a  house,  a  throne,  a  footstool,  a  crown  and 
a  scepter,  a  sword  and  a  bow,  and  yet  sternly  for- 
bids any  likeness,  any  image,  any  imagined  re- 
semblance ? 

They  go  farther.  They  give  the  awful  Power 
unseen  every  intellectual  and  moral  trait  possessed 
by  man.  He  is  loving,  He  is  angry ;  He  is  wrath- 
ful, He  is  pitiful ;  He  swears,  and  stands  by  His 
oath ;  He  repents,  and  changes  His  decree ;  He  is 
utterly  human,  only  without  sin.  There  is  no 
more  intense,  individualized,  clear-cut  personality 
in  all  history  or  drama  than  this  God  of  the  Old 
Testament,  with  the  incommunicable  name. 

The  utmost  stretch  of  human  genius  in  the  crea- 
tion of  character  has  never  yet  approached  the 
vivid  individuality  and  personality  of  this  Person, 
marked  in  those  old  books  by  the  name  forever 
hidden  in  the  "  mystic  letters  four."1 

There  is  a  wonderful  thing  extant  for  some 
years  now,  born  in  Germany — in  whose  theologi- 
cal schools  Christ  and  His  gospel  are  still  on  trial, 
as  if  Pilate's  court  were  a  perpetually  sitting  tribu- 
nal— and  imported  free  from  tariff  or  duty  into 
England  and  America,  called  by  somebody — for 
what  reason  I  know  not — u  the  Higher  Criticism." 
1  nj.T 


68  PERSONALITY  OF  GOD. 

One  might  ask,  If  this  be  higher  criticism,  what 
is  lower  criticism,  and  what  the  very  lowest  at 
last? 

Well,  it  is  all  pure  guesswork,  let  me  say  at  once, 
and  in  its  most  characteristic  development  may  be 
understood  from  a  learned  book  published  in  this 
country,  called  "The  Shakespeare  Cipher,"  by 
a  very  able  man ;  and  also  by  a  new  and  better 
"  Shakespeare  Cipher,"  published  by  a  learned 
doctor  of  medicine,  to  show  that  the  whole  mass 
of  poetry  we  call  Shakespeare's  was  written  by 
Francis  Bacon  to  abuse  Queen  Elizabeth,  and  send 
her  down  branded  to  all  time,  because  she  refused 
to  acknowledge  him,  Francis  Bacon,  as  her  son  by 
a  secret  marriage  with  his  father  when  she  was 
only  the  princess,  the  "  Lady  Elizabeth  " ! 

In  these  two  cases  the  Shakespearian  critics  know 
the  language  in  which  the  book  was  written.  It 
is  their  mother-tongue.  It  was  written  three  cen- 
turies ago.  In  the  other  case  there  is  not  a  man 
living  who  could  pronounce  a  speech  in  Hebrew 
so  as  to  be  understood  by  Isaiah  or  Daniel  (sup- 
posing there  ever  was  an  Isaiah  or  a  Daniel ! ). 

It  is  a  sad  thing  to  be  idle,  especially  in  a  land 
where  there  are  only  books,  pipes,  and  beer,  and 
where  a  paternal  government  presides  over  a  man's 


PERSONALITY  OF  GOD.  69 

birth,  education,  religion,  occupation,  marriage, 
sickness,  death,  and  finally  his  tombstone. 

Turn  him  loose  with  the  conception  that  all 
things — government,  social  order,  politics,  science, 
and  the  rest — are  settled,  untouchable  even — in- 
deed everything  taken  out  of  the  arena  of  in- 
telligent discussion  except  Christ  and  the  Bible — 
and  he  must  necessarily  turn  critic,  and,  if  he  has 
little  to  do,  "  higher  critic." 

The  point  I  am  desirous  to  emphasize  is  that 
this  criticism,  in  the  necessitudes  of  its  conclusions, 
requires  us  to  believe  that  a  great  many  of  the 
ideas,  influences,  and  practices  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment came  from  Egypt,  Chaldea,  and  Persia. 

Of  that,  happily,  you  and  I  are  just  as  able  to 
judge  as  any  critic;  for  it  is  not  a  thing  of  Hebrew- 
consonants  or  masoretic  vowels  or  accents,  but  of 
history  and  common  sense. 

Did  the  Hebrews,  upon  their  return  from  cap- 
tivity, reedit  or  rewrite  and  reorder  their  sacred 
books  under  the  influence  of  the  Persian  dualism? 
And  do  you  so  account  for  the  final  bitterness 
against  all  images,  and  the  intensity  of  the  mono- 
theism thenceforward? 

Well,  I  think  you  and  I  are  quite  competent  to 
examine  that,  if  we  do  not  understand  a  word  of 


70  PERSONALITY  OF  GOD. 

Hebrew.  Ormuzd  and  Ahriman,  the  gods  of 
eternal  light  and  eternal  dark,  eternal  good  and 
eternal  evil,  are  no  more  persons  than  the  cloud 
that  floats  across  the  sky.  They  have  not  a 
single  quality  of  personality.  They  are  prin- 
ciples, whatever  you  may  mean  by  that;  names 
to  express  what  the  old  Aryans  believed  they 
saw  in  life,  time,  the  world,  in  the  present  and 
in  the  past ;  principles  contending  with  each  other, 
each  now  victor  and  now  vanquished ;  but  being 
Aryans,  "  children  of  light,"  having  still  retained 
enough  of  the  old  divine  tradition  to  hold  that 
men  were  on  God's  side  and  right's  side  and 
truth's  side,  and  that  the  right  would  be  master  in 
the  end,  they  stood  by  Ormuzd  and  exhorted  men 
to  do  the  same,  and  called  their  land  Iran,  "  the 
land  of  light,"  and  the  Tartar  world,  the  devil- 
serving  world  opposed  to  them,  Turan,  "  the  land 
of  darkness." 

They  were  our  ancient  cousins,  and  they  be- 
lieved in  light,  and  taught  their  children  to  ride 
boldly,  shoot  straight,  and  tell  the  truth;  and  so 
let  us  honor  their  memory ! 

But  from  no  notion  of  their  vague  principle 
Ormuzd  can  you  derive  the  clear-cut,  realistic 
Personality,  the  Man  whose  name  is  so  awful  that 


PERSONALITY  OF  GOD.  ]i 

you  may  say  God  (El),  or  gods  (Elohim),  but  you 
must  not  utter  His,  for  one  syllable  of  it  spoken 
out  would  rend  the  heavens! 

Are  we  afraid  of  anthropomorphism?  It  is  a 
long  word,  and  long  words  ought  to  scare  un- 
learned people.  You  will  find  the  word  a  terrible 
one,  and  a  sect-brand  and  heresy  name  in  church 
story. 

But  I  want  you  to  notice  that  neither  Old 
Testament  nor  New  is  in  the  least  degree  dis- 
turbed by  what  the  word  means.  It  is,  after  all, 
only  a  Greek  compound ;  and  our  new  dictionary- 
makers  are  putting  such — thousands  of  them — 
into  our  dictionaries  of  English,  so  that  the  big- 
gest English  dictionary  of  this  year  will  be  supple- 
mented next  year  by  a  new  one  advertised  to  con- 
tain "one  thousand  new  words  not  to  be  found 
in  any  other  dictionary."  These  additional  words 
are  all  Greek  compounds — or  slang ;  and  the  Eng- 
lish dictionary  "  up  to  date  "  contains  about  five 
complete  and  distinct  languages;  and  yet  there 
is  one  entire  English  language — even  two — which 
has  never  yet  been  put  into  any  dictionary,  and 
this  to  my  personal  knowledge ! 1 

1  The  negro  dialect  of  the  South  and  the  negro  dialect  of  the 
writers  of  Southern  stories. 


-j 2  PERSONALITY  OF  GOD. 

Now  man  was  made  in  the  image  of  God. 
That  means  (real,  profound,  spiritual  theologians 
will  tell  you)  in  the  image  of  the  Son  of  God,  the 
second  Person  of  the  Trinity — such  a  transcendent 
and  overwhelming  Personality  that  He  has  two 
natures :  the  infinite  and  awful  nature  of  God,  and 
the  poor  finite  nature  of  man,  each  in  its  utmost 
fullness  and  perfection ;  and  yet  both  these  natures 
make  but  one  Person! 

That  is  the  Nicene  Creed  upon  Personality. 
That  is  the  immensity  of  what  our  poor  little  An- 
glicized Latin  word  "  person  "  means  at  its  high- 
est. Heaven  help  our  human  stuttering!  but  that 
is  the  best  we  can  do.  "Tell  me,  I  pray  Thee, 
Thy  name."  It  could  not  be  told  then.  It  is 
only  half  understood  now. 

Years  after,  a  man  of  Jacob's  family — a  greater 
and  a  better  man — was  riding  through  the  same 
land,  but  on  another  errand.  He  was  son  of 
Jacob's  best-beloved,  of  the  tribe  of  Benjamin,  and 
his  name  was  Saul. 

He  was  on  his  way  to  Damascus  to  arrest  and 
drag  forth  men  and  women  charged  with  the  crime 
of  worshiping,  in  the  way  men  called  heresy,  the 
God  of  their  fathers.  He  was  to  bring  them 
bound  to  Jerusalem  to  be  tried  by  the  sanhedrim. 


PERSONALITY  OF  GOD.  73 

And  on  the  road  he  too  meets  the  Wrestler. 
The  contrast  is  remarkable.  Jacob  was  left  alone ; 
Saul  was  surrounded  with  armed  men.  Jacob's 
meeting  was  in  the  night ;  Saul's  was  in  the  high 
noontide.  Jacob's  Antagonist  appears  mysteriously 
and  silently  out  of  the  dark;  Saul's  smites  him  to 
the  earth  with  one  burst  of  overpowering  light, 
and  calls  him  by  his  name. 

But  Jacob's  question  and  Saul's  are  the  same: 
"Who  art  Thou,  Lord?"  Jacob  got  no  answer 
because  he  could  not  understand  the  name.  It 
was  ages  too  early.  Saul  gets  his  promptly :  "  I 
am  Jesus  whom  thou  persecutest." 

Jacob  was  lamed  by  the  touch  of  the  awful 
Wrestler.  Saul  was  blinded.  Jacob  went  limp- 
ing over  Peniel;  went  limping  all  his  life;  bore 
the  brand  of  the  wrestle.  Saul  went  with  those 
poor  scalded  eyes  of  his — his  "  thorn  in  the  flesh  " 
— all  his  days,  when  the  scales  of  total  blindness 
fell  from  them,  and  pitifully  begs  consideration 
from  the  Galatians  when  he  has  no  amanuensis 
like  Luke  or  Mark  or  Timothy :  "  See  with  how 
large  letters  I  have  written  unto  you  with  mine 
own  hand;"  the  straggling,  clumsy,  uncial  letters 
— like  a  child  writing  "large  hand." 

But  the  answer — "Jesus  whom  thou  persecut- 


74  PERSONALITY  OF  GOD. 

est."  Now  Jesus  is  just  the  Greek,  Latin,  and 
English  form  for  the  Hebrew  Joshua — "  He  who 
saves,"  or  "  God  who  delivers,"  or  "  God's  De- 
liverer." And  nozv  He  can  be  understood  in 
part. 

The  awful  Wrestler  with  the  souls  of  men  in 
midnight  loneliness  of  the  desert,  or  in  burning 
noon  on  the  world's  crowded  highways,  wrestles 
to  save.  Our  God  is  the  Deliverer.  If  He  wres- 
tle and  lame,  He  wrestles  to  make  a  prince  of  God 
out  of  a  knavish  Jacob.  If  He  wrestle  and  over- 
throw and  blind  the  man  stricken  amid  trampling 
horse-hoofs  to  the  sand,  He  smites  to  save.  His 
name  is  Joshua;  and  Saul  rises  smitten  blind,  as 
his  great  ancestor  was  smitten  lame,  but  an  apos- 
tle henceforth,  a  selected  prince  in  the  kingdom  of 
heaven ! 

We  are  slowly  coming  to  see  that  the  spiritual 
law  in  the  natural  world  is  that  there  is  no  advance 
save  by  wrestle  and  pain,  by  bloody  sweat  and 
groaning  agony.  So  men  have  developed.  So 
the  lowest  forms  of  life  have  risen  to  the  higher. 
So  nations  have  builded  themselves  and  become 
"  the  chosen  people,"  to  do  the  chosen  work,  the 
princely  work  of  God! 

But   this   law  is  an   eternal   law   in  the   world 


PERSONALITY  OF  GOD.  75 

spiritual,  and  therefore  its  manifestation  in  the 
world  we  call  natural. 

The  development  of  the  man  Jacob  into  Israel, 
the  prince  of  God,  is  by  anguish,  sorrow,  bitter 
pain — Gethsemane's  blood-drops;  the  blinding  on 
the  road  to  Damascus,  the  laming  on  Peniel.  Be- 
cause there  is  no  development  of  the  pneuma 
but  by  these  and  the  bitter  cross,  so  there  is  no 
development  of  the  psyche  but  by  toil  and  suffer- 
ing. Nay,  no  development  of  even  the  soma,  the 
mere  body,  but  by  the  same. 

One  might,  if  he  had  ears  to  hear,  write,  I  think, 
the  most  wonderful  poem  on  the  sorrows  of  the 
material  world,  whose  groans  God  must  hear  as  it 
struggles  upward.  "  The  whole  creation  groaneth 
and  travaileth  in  pain  together  until  now."  1  The 
spiritual  law  is  an  awful  law  when  set  to  work  in 
the  natural.     I  do  not  wonder  we  have  pessimists. 

But  the  law  is  not  the  expression  of  blind  force. 
The  birth-pains  and  writhing  agonies  of  the  regen- 
eration of  a  world  are  not  the  tyrannous  inflictions 
of  brute  power  or  blind  machinery. 

Behind  all,  over  all,  in  all,  rules  and  reigns  the 

1  The  victory  and  the  redemption  of  the  pneuma  must  precede 
the  deliverance  of  the  psyche  and  soma.  The  struggle  of  the 
natural  must  continue  until  the  victory  in  the  spiritual  world, 
according  to  St.  Paul. 


76  PERSONALITY  OF  GOD. 

Person,  the  Humanity,  in  whose  image  we  are 
made,  and  whom  we  can  understand. 

Even  that  He  declared  of  old  in  every  vision  of 
every  seer.  He  came  appearing  in  the  likeness  of 
the  nature  He  was  to  take  unto  Himself  forever 
in  the  mystery  of  the  incarnation,  consummated 
nineteen  hundred  years  ago  that  December  night 
under  the  Syrian  stars. 

He  had  His  name  in  all  the  old  story ;  an  awful, 
mysterious  name,  declaring  eternal  existence  and 
eternal  power ;  but  a  name,  a  Person. 

Taking  on  the  reality  of  human  nature  and  mak- 
ing that  a  part  of  the  infinite  Personality,  He  takes 
a  name  all  men  can  utter,  and  all  men  understand  ; 
a  name  near  and  dear  to  souls  blinded,  staggering, 
struggling,  hard-bestead ;  a  name  of  victorious 
hope;  a  triumph  cry  to  the  muster,  the  march, 
the  battle,  and  the  victory,  for  a  world  groaning 
and  travailing  to  the  birth  of  the  new  day — "  I  am 
the  Deliverer." 

And  He  proved  the  name  His  own!  Let  us 
lay  our  earthly  fancies  down.  We  are  Christian 
people.  There  are  things  on  which  our  earthly 
philosophies  babble — the  best  of  them.  The  world 
is  a  world  of  onwardness ;  a  world  where  every  to- 
morrow is  better  than  to-day ;  a  world  struggling 


PERSONALITY  OF  GOD.  JJ 

up  to  the  eternal  daylight.  That  is  our  hope.  It 
is  more — it  is  our  faith.  We  wrestle  on.  We  will 
not  let  Him  go  till  the  blessing  comes.  And  the 
faith  weakens  not,  and  the  hope  dims  not,  in  all 
the  sorrow  of  the  burdened  years,  for  we  have  now 
the  name  of  the  Man  who  is  wrestling  it  into  light. 
His  name  is  JESUS ;  proved  before  our  eyes  in  life 
and  death.  One  far  more  than  philosopher — 
though  no  philosopher  greater — Sage  and  Seer  of 
our  own  kindred,  put  our  Christian  thought  in 
form  for  us  all — the  final  proof  to  earthly  sight  of 
the  name's  truth.     "  I  am  Jesus,"  He  cried,  and 

"  Those  blessed  feet 
Full  eighteen  hundred  years  ago 
Were  nailed  for  our  advantage 
On  the  bitter  cross." 


LECTURE  III. 
RESPONSIBILITY  OF  GOD. 


79 


/  am  the  Lord,  and  there  is  none  else,  there  is  no  God  besides  Me : 
I  girded  thee,  though  thou  hast  not  known  Me;  that  they  may 
know  from  the  rising  of  the  sun,  and  from  the  west,  that  there  is 
none  besides  Me.  J  am  the  Lord,  and  there  is  none  else.  L  form 
the  light,  and  create  darkness :  L  make  peace,  and  create  evil:  L 
the  Lord  do  all  these  things.  ISA.  xlv.  5-7. 


80 


LECTURE    III. 

RESPONSIBILITY    OF    GOD. 

/^  OD,  as  the  books  of  the  Bible  represent  Him, 
^  is  One.  That  One  is  a  Personality ;  but  of 
such  enormous  personality  that  He  is  three  Per- 
sons, and  yet  one  God.  There  are  those  who 
stagger  at  this.  I  confess  I  cannot  understand 
their  mental  condition.  I  am  a  poor  little  limited, 
finite  existence ;  as  far  as  anything  I  can  see  in 
this  world,  scarce  a  square  inch  in  size  or  mean- 
ing. My  poor  little  time  is  a  few  years  between 
the  eternal  past  and  the  eternal  future;  and  a 
large  number  of  those  years  are  spent  in  uncon- 
sciousness, infancy,  and  childhood.  A  good  share 
of  the  hours  that  are  mine,  when  I  really  am  con- 
scious, are  spent  in  unconsciousness.  The  night 
comes — an  apparently  arbitrary  arrangement — and 
I  am  practically  non-existent  during  many  hours 
of  the  short  period  when  I  have  some  force  of 
body  and  of  mind. 

Si 


82  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  GOD. 

And  then  comes  the  other  dark  again,  and  I  am 
lost  from  all  men's  knowledge  and  memory  as  far 
as  this  life  goes.  Out  of  the  dark,  into  the  dark 
again.  A  few  years  between,  of  light  and  dark, 
of  consciousness  and  unconsciousness,  of  doing  and 
being  tired  of  doing,  the  whirling  spokes  of  light 
and  dark  spinning  me  on  and  away. 

There  are  a  few  things  I  can  do,  millions  of 
things  I  cannot  do.  Some  few  things  I  know  or 
think  I  know ;  and  if  I  am  a  writing  or  speaking 
man  I  try  to  write  them  or  speak  them,  and  suc- 
ceed in  some  small  measure.  All  the  books  ever 
written,  all  the  speeches  ever  spoken,  cannot  con- 
tain the  things  I  do  not  know ;  the  things  Plato  and 
"broad-browed  Verulam  "  did  not  know,  much 
less  the  Parliament  of  Great  Britain  or  the  Con- 
gress of  the  United  States ! 

I  have  seen  great  libraries — enormous  provision 
of  space  for  the  collection  of  human  knowledge. 
But  you  would  be  obliged  to  attach  them  all  to- 
gether— the  Bodleian,  the  British  Museum,  the 
Bibliotheque  Royale,  the  Astor,  the  Lenox,  and, 
the  grandest  of  them  all  for  architectural  dignity 
and  spaciousness,  the  Public  Library  of  Boston, 
and  all  the  libraries  of  all  the  colleges  in  existence 
— to  hold  the  books  containing  what  the  profes- 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  GOD.  83 

sors  in  all  the  colleges  and  universities  in  Europe 
and  America  do  not  know ! 

And  yet,  being  only  this,  I  have  the  dignity  of 
personality !  Am  I  to  be  startled,  amazed,  when 
I  am  told  that  the  Power  which  makes,  orders,  and 
guides  the  universe  is  one  God,  and  yet  in  that 
divine  nature  three  personalities?  If  I  were  told 
there  are  a  hundred  or  a  thousand,  I  do  not  see 
why  I  should  be  at  all  staggered.  When  I  apply 
my  logic  or  my  metaphysics  to  the  infinite,  I  am 
as  a  beetle  undertaking  to  lecture  on  astronomy. 
There  is  no  common  measure  between  the  finite 
and  the  infinite.  The  infinite  is  not  merely  an  in- 
finite number  of  finites.  Endless  eternity  is  not  an 
infinite  number  of  days  of  twenty-four  hours  each. 

There  is  but  one  possible  point  of  touch  between 
the  finite  and  the  infinite,  and  that  point  is  ethical. 
There  is  no  point  common  of  power,  of  size,  of 
extension,  of  force,  of  abidance,  of  knowledge. 
There  is  no  point  of  comparison,  no  place  or 
ground  logical,  where  you  can  bring  these  two  to- 
gether, except  the  point  of  moral  obligation. 

And  this  moral  obligation  rests  alone  upon  the 
fact  of  personality — no  person,  no  obligation ;  no 
person,  no  responsibility.  Mark  it  well,  and  it 
will  save  you  from  endless  confusion. 


84  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  COD. 

There  is  no  responsibility,  no  moral  obligation 
in  a  cyclone ;  none  whatever  in  a  hurricane ;  none 
at  all  in  the  great  sun  over  your  heads;  not  the 
shadow  of  a  moral  responsibility  in  all  the  infinites 
and  all  the  eternities. 

Power  behind  phenomena  expresses  nothing  but 
power  if  you  leave  it  with  that  definition.  As  a 
being  with  moral  responsibility,  sense  of  duty  and 
obligation,  and  conscience  telling  me  "  You  must," 
I  have  a  supreme  contempt  for  all  the  infinites  and 
all  the  unconditioneds,  for  sun,  moon,  stars,  and  all 
powers  behind  them ;  for  I  am  far  better  than 
they,  as  the  man  is  better  than  the  brute.  I  have 
no  reverence,  and  can  get  up  none,  and  I  certainly 
have  not  an  atom  of  fear,  for  the  power  behind 
phenomena,  unless  that  power  can  prove  to  me 
most  unmistakably  that  it  has  sense,  decency,  some 
regard  for  right  and  truth,  and,  in  fact,  is  using  its 
faculties  to  do  the  best  it  can  in  its  place. 

Do  not  get  scared,  and  do  not  abdicate  your 
awful  right  of  judgment  in  the  face  of  mere  brute 
force.  It  is  man's  prerogative  to  say, "  This  is  right, 
this  is  wrong;  this  ought  to  be,  this  ought  not  to 
be;"  and  to  say  so  at  the  mouth  of  a  thousand 
bellowing  cannon.  And  man  has  done  it,  and  is 
doing  it,  and  will  keep  straight  on  doing  till  he  ends. 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  GOD.  85 

You  cannot  frighten  us  by  your  power  behind 
phenomena,  no  matter  how  infinite  and  almighty 
that  power  is.  I  am  a  good  deal  better  and  bigger 
than  that  power,  and  pass  judgment  upon  its  per- 
formances, and  praise  or  condemn  them  at  my  will, 
knowing  that  my  judgments  shall  stand,  and  know- 
ing that  if  the  power  behind  phenomena  is  power 
only,  I  and  my  judgments  shall  still  stand  when 
phenomena  and  that  sort  of  power  behind  them  or 
in  them  have  vanished  into  nothingness. 

The  power  behind  phenomena,  to  come  into 
contact  with  men,  must  come  as  a  person.  There 
is  that  strange  power  in  personalities  that  they  can 
understand  one  another.  And  the  essence  of  per- 
sonality is  moral  responsibility.  A  person  stands 
under  obligation.  It  makes  no  difference  whether 
he  be  a  finite  or  an  infinite  person ;  he  is  under 
obligation ;  he  is  bound  by  law  and  duty. 

Does  it  startle  you  to  say  that  Almighty  God  is 
under  obligation?  Unless  He  is,  you  and  I  can 
have  no  spiritual  relation  with  Him  whatever; 
nay,  not  even  an  intelligent  relation.  We  cer- 
tainly can  have  no  moral  obligation  toward  any 
Being  who  has  no  moral  obligation  toward  us. 
That  is  what  makes  the  God  of  Calvinism,  by  His 
very  definition,  forever  impossible.    A  Being  whose 


86  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  GOD. 

sole  motive  of  action  is  His  own  good  pleasure  is  a 
Being  with  whom  we  have  no  common  bonds.  The 
only  feeling  would  be  one  of  abject,  unreasoning 
terror.  For  the  brave  and  the  true  it  might  some 
day  be  imperative  duty  to  defy  and  resist  Him  in 
spite  of  the  terror. 

But  the  God  who  wrestles  with  man,  and  wrestles 
with  him  as  a  Man,  reveals  Himself  as  a  Person,  and 
as  such  in  relations  and  under  names  of  relation ; 
and  relations  carry  responsibility.  The  unrelated 
can  have  no  responsibility. 

He  is  a  Maker,  and  a  maker  is  responsible  for 
what  he  makes.  A  man  cannot  make  a  wheel- 
barrow without  assuming  the  responsibility  of  see- 
ing that  it  will  work,  and  that  in  working  it  will  do 
no  harm  to  anybody. 

God  reveals  Himself  as  a  King.  It  is  another 
name  of  relation,  of  duty  and  responsibility.  A 
king  must  govern  his  people.  He  must  suffer  with 
his  people.  He  must  keep  watch  and  ward  for  his 
kingdom's  safety.  He  must  govern  firmly,  right- 
eously, helpfully,  mercifully.  He  is  bound  by 
webs  of  moral  bonds  to  those  over  whom  he  rules, 
as  they  are  bound  to  him. 

God  reveals  Himself  as  a  Father.  Surely  there 
is  a  name  of  obligation  and  responsibility  here !     A 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  GOD.  $y 

father — we  all  know  a  father's  duties.  And  it  is  in 
such  common  household  and  familiar  names  that 
He  tells  men  His  character.  A  father  must  take 
care  of  his  family  ;  guard,  shelter,  feed,  provide  for, 
help  his  family,  his  children,  his  helpless  ones. 

Why  are  we  afraid  to  take  God  at  His  word? 
Why  shrink  from  the  names  He  uses  to  reveal 
Himself?  Why  always  fall  back  into  the  vague- 
ness and  inanity  of  our  metaphysical  irreverence 
— as  if  we  thought  God  did  not  know  Himself,  and 
our  spider-web  words  added  somehow  to  His  glory 
as  Father  and  King? 

Does  He  not  know?  Creator,  King,  Father, 
Householder,  Shepherd,  even  Employer  paying 
wages  for  a  day's  work — these  are  His  chosen 
names ;  and  these,  you  see,  are  all  names  of  rela- 
tion, and  so  of  responsibility,  obligation,  and  there- 
fore of  Personality. 

Thus  in  a  moral  world  we  live  moral  beings, 
under  a  moral  Lord  and  Government.  The 
"Ought"  rules  over  all,  transcends  all;  reigns  in 
the  Personality  of  the  Father  and  King. 

It  is  an  instinct  with  us  to  help  the  Almighty  all 
we  can.  There  is  something  in  the  fact  that  we 
are  made  in  God's  image  that  leads  us,  I  suppose, 
to  try  to  create  even  a  universe,  no  matter  how 


88  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  GOD. 

fantastically.  And  facing  the  fact  of  a  world  full 
of  evil,  pain,  and  sin,  we  want  to  explain  it  all  in 
some  way  to  save  God  responsibility. 

Now  observe  He  does  not  thank  us!  He  has 
no  wish  to  shirk  any  part  of  the  responsibility.  He 
has  made  the  universe,  and  He  stands  by  the  con- 
sequences, and  asks  not  the  help  of  your  meta- 
physics to  argue  Him  out  of  His  responsibility,  nor 
your  sentimentalities  or  theologies  to  apologize  for 
Him! 

The  Persian  dualism  was  a  philosophy  to  ac- 
count for  the  existence  of  evil,  and  yet  hold  to  a 
good  God.  For  myself,  I  confess  that  as  a  mere 
working  hypothesis,  apart  from  revelation,  explan- 
atory of  facts  as  they  are,  it  is  the  only  hypothesis 
I  as  a  reasonable  man  could  admit.  It  is  plain, 
direct,  deals  with  the  facts,  and  puts  man  on  the 
side  he,  as  a  moral  being,  should  occupy. 

But — the  Almighty,  the  Personality  with  the 
awful  name,  declines,  by  the  mouth  of  the  prophet, 
to  be  relieved  of  His  obligations  as  Creator! 

In  the  summons  to  "  Cyrus,  His  anointed,  whose 
right  hand  I  have  holden,"  the  prophet  proclaims 
the  Personality,  the  unity,  and  the  responsibility, 
in  the  face  of  Zerdusht  and  his  two  Principles :  "  I 
am  the  Lord,  and  there  is  none  else,  there  is  no 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  GOD.  89 

God  besides  me.  /  form  the  light,  and  create 
darkness:  I  make  peace,  and  create  evil:  I  the 
Lord  do  all  these  things."  "Verily  Thou  art  a 
God  that  hidest  Thyself,  O  God  of  Israel,  the 
Saviour." 

It  is  only,  I  take  it,  the  same  desire  to  shield  the 
Almighty  from  responsibility — a  very  amiable  if  a 
very  weak  and  superfluous  desire — which  prompts 
some  good  people  to  hold  such  notions  as  restora- 
tionism — that  is,  that  evil  men  and  devils  will  find 
another  chance  somewhere,  in  some  other  world  of 
trial,  and  be  all  "  saved,"  as  they  call  it,  sometime  ; 
and  still  other  good  people  to  hold  that  all  the  un- 
converted will  just  pass  into  an  eternal  sleep,  and 
only  the  righteous  be  immortal. 

I  have  no  quarrel  with  the  temper  of  these 
dreams;  but  they  make  no  appeal  to  my  intelli- 
gence, and  rather  seem  impertinent.  The  eternal 
Wrestler  can  take  sufficient  care  of  His  own  repu- 
tation ;  and  if  He  declares  Himself  responsible  for 
the  evils  of  this  world,  and  makes  no  excuse,  re- 
sponsible for  the  pain,  misery,  torment,  and  wretch- 
edness of  this  world — I  cannot  doubt  but  He  will 
justify  Himself  in  any  world,  as  He  justifies  His 
ways  here,  more  and  more,  to  human  faith  and 
human  reasonableness.     At  all  events,  my  poor, 


9<D  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  GOD. 

ignorant  guesses  are  quite  unnecessary,  and  per- 
haps, as  apologies,  impertinent. 

The  worship  of  a  responsible  God  makes  what 
some  have  called  "  the  Scheme  of  Salvation"  no 
"  scheme  "  at  all,  but  just  the  inevitable  working 
of  an  inevitable  law.  As  a  "scheme"  we  know 
nothing  about  it.  The  Lord  never  revealed  it  as 
a  logical  scheme  at  all.  He  surely  never  taught 
men  that  "  right  views  upon  the  Scheme  of  Salva- 
tion "  were  of  any  consequence. 

The  New  Testament  is  just  the  blossom  and 
fruit  of  the  Old.  God,  being  a  responsible  Father 
and  King,  must  by  inevitable  law  follow  His  own. 
The  shepherd  must  go  after  the  sheep  which  was 
lost.  The  father  must  meet  the  prodigal  while  he 
is  yet  far  off.  For  the  sheep  is  still  the  shepherd's ; 
wheresoever  it  wanders,  ownership  is  not  changed. 
The  son  is  still'his  father's  son  among  the  swine; 
not  a  whit  less  so  than  when  the  son  wears  the  robe 
and  the  ring !  Indeed,  the  title  to  wear  the  robe 
and  sit  at  the  feast  was  never  forfeited  at  any  time. 
It  existed  during  all  the  swine-feeding;  was 
promptly  acknowledged  the  instant  it  was  claimed ! 

For  we  are  dealing  with  personalities.  And  per- 
sonalities are  permanent,  and  the  relations  between 
them  are  permanent  also.     Those  connected  with 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  GOD.  91 

a  personality  that  is  infinite  are  infinite  relations — 
from  eternity  to  eternity. 

So  the  revelation  has  been  that  of  a  suffering 
God.  I  take  it  for  too  shallow  an  opinion  of  the 
atonement  to  suppose  it  a  three-years'  life  of 
poverty  and  a  cruel  death  that  men  might  have 
their  sins  forgiven  in  any  judicial  or  commercial 
method,  and  by  the  misery  and  death  of  One  have 
a  happy  and  blissful  Mohammed's  heaven  for  all 
eternity !  We  cannot  take  Caiaphas's  doctrine  of 
atonement. 

Surely  there  was  larger  and  more  rational  pur- 
pose in  the  fact  that  the  divine  Wrestler  with  the 
souls  of  men  took  their  own  nature  upon  Him  and 
became  one  of  them,  or  rather,  in  His  infinite 
humanity,  all  of  them,  and  before  their  eyes 
wrestled  with  the  world's  sufferings,  and  suffered 
with  its  sore  pains,  and  was  bruised  and  wounded 
with  its  death,  and  died! 

If  suffering  be  the  worst  thing,  could  He  choose 
it  ?  If  the  ignominious  cross  and  the  long  agony 
be  essential  evil,  could  He  choose  them  and  call 
on  those  He  loved  to  take  the  same  cross  and 
follow  Him  ?  How  strangely  blind  and  half-hea- 
thenish do  we  still  remain! 

Is  it  not  the  revelation  of  a  toiling,  striving, 


92  RESPONSIBILITY  OF   GOD. 

suffering  God  ?  Let  us  get  rid  of  the  phantom  our 
poor  philosophies  impose  upon  us  still,  the  best 
of  us.  We  weave  a  God  out  of  our  own  inner  con- 
sciousness, and  then  attribute  to  Him  the  character 
we  would  have  were  we  omnipotent,  and  omnipo- 
tent as  He! 

In  days  when  king  meant  autocrat,  men  ima- 
gined Him  an  irresponsible  despot,  doing  things 
solely  for  His  own  gratification.  Even  what  we 
have  dared  to  call  Christian  theologies  have  given 
Him  a  character  and  motives  which,  did  they  be- 
long to  a  man,  all  free,  honorable  men  would  con- 
demn with  one  voice  of  detestation. 

It  is  not  the  character  He  gives  Himself.  He 
chooses  His  own  name.  He  is  bound  to,  and  is 
responsible  for,  and  suffers  with  His  own  creation. 
There  is  a  depth  of  awful  meaning  in  those  words, 
u  The  Lamb  slain  from  the  foundation  of  the 
world."  The  tragedy  of  Calvary  was  an  exhibi- 
tion in  time  and  space,  that  men  might  know  for- 
ever of  what  goes  on  in  the  abysses  of  the  divine 
nature  out  of  time  and  out  of  space. 

We  Christians  confess  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
was  and  is  the  Son  of  God.  Now  He  had  the 
power  and  also  the  wisdom — both,  we  profess,  in- 
finite— to  choose  whatsoever  life,  being  the  Son  of 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  GOD.  93 

Man,  that  He  would.  He  chose  the  life  we  all 
know.  There  was  no  constraint  upon  Him  from 
without.  But  He  had,  we  profess,  a  purpose. 
There  was,  then,  the  constraint  of  a  purpose — a 
purpose  formed  within  Himself  out  of  the  condi- 
tions of  His  own  nature. 

It  was  an  utterly  unselfish  purpose.  On  that, 
not  only  all  Christians,  but  all  unbelievers  who  read 
His  earthly  life,  are  alike  agreed.  All  our  pulpits 
inform  us  that  His  life  is  the  one  model  life  for 
men.  Would  any  of  them  dare  to  gainsay  that 
statement?  Would  any  pulpit  anywhere,  under 
the  name  of  Christian,  dare  to  assert  that  the  life 
of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  was  not  the  loftiest  life  con- 
ceivable for  a  man — the  noblest,  bravest,  manliest, 
kingliest  life? 

We  all  agree  with  the  pulpits.  It  is  very  strange, 
considering  the  way  we  ourselves  want  to  live,  but 
we  all  do! 

But  Jesus  of  Nazareth  was  God.  He  revealed 
God  in  His  inmost  character.  "  He  that  hath  seen 
Me  hath  seen  the  Father."  So,  then,  that  life 
related  in  the  Gospels  is  God's  life.  I  do  not  want 
to  escape  the  conclusion.  If  I  did,  I  fail  to  see 
how  I  can ;  I  am  walled  in. 

Does  it  occur  to  us  how  utterly  contradictory  to 


94  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  GOD. 

our  common  conceptions  of  the  divine  nature  that 
life  is?  how  utterly  contradictory — as  just  a  plain, 
bald  "not  so" — that  life  is  to  many  of  our  ac- 
cepted and  most  orthodox  (so  called)  theologies? 

I  confess  I  am  but  a  child  feeling  my  way — most 
pitifully  helpless  and  blind.  The  gospel  is,  to  this 
day,  a  hidden  mystery  in  most  part.  Those  words 
and  common  works  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  are  far 
more  inscrutable  mysteries  to  me  than  all  the  mir- 
acles of  Old  Testament  or  New. 

I  cannot  "  stand  agaze  at  Joshua's  moon  in 
Ajalon  "  when  I  read  that  "  after  supper  He  took 
a  towel,  and  girded  Himself,"  and  washed  their 
feet ;  and  that  He  who  did  so  declared,  "  Have  I 
been  so  long  time  with  you,  and  yet  hast  thou  not 
known  Me,  Philip?  how  sayest  thou  then,  Show 
us  the  Father?"  "I  am  among  you  as  he  that 
serveth."  "Whosoever  will  be  greatest  among 
you,  let  him  be  your  servant."  Dare  you  follow 
out  these  things  to  the  plainly  suggested  end? 
Will  you  turn,  as  your  theologies  and  pulpits  at 
once  do,  and  begin  to  hedge? 

I  confess  frankly  my  terror  at  what  seems  to  be 
the  only  possible  meaning.  I  dare  not  formulate 
it.  I  believe,  however,  that  it  is  the  very  heart  of 
the  Catholic  faith — a  faith  which  looms  larger  and 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  GOD.  95 

profounder  as  the  years  pass  on  ;  a  faith  as  far  be- 
yond our  complete  understanding  now  as  would 
have  been  the  name  Jesus  to  wrestling  Jacob. 
But  it  is  all  there  in  that  old  Nicene  Creed;  and 
"  the  Church  of  the  Future,"  of  which  we  hear 
sometimes  so  much  in  very  foolish  talk,  will  just  be 
a  church  large  enough,  holy  enough,  wise  enough, 
to  believe  all  there  is  in  the  Nicene  Creed ! 

I  just  dare,  and  that  only,  to  suggest  it,  and  in 
a  question :  Does  the  Nicene  Creed  profess  faith 
in  a  God  who  serves  ?  Do  the  acts  and  words  of 
our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  reveal  a  King  who  is  the 
almighty  and  eternal  and  awful  King — awfulest 
and  highest — and  who,  because  He  is  so,  is  the 
Servant  of  all  ?  Did  Jesus  of  Nazareth  reveal  not 
only  a  suffering  God — we  are  all  agreed  on  that,  I 
suppose — but  a  responsible  God,  and  therefore  a 
serving  God?  "  If  I  then,  your  Lord  and  Master, 
have  washed  your  feet!"  Think  of  it!  If  the 
highest  place  is  the  place  of  most  obligation,  of 
most  service! 

This  is  all  with  fear  and  trembling.  But  we  are 
Nicene  Christians  here.  We  chant  the  faith  of 
nineteen  centuries ;  and  it  is  a  faith  in  Personalities 
and  in  facts  concerning  those  Personalities.  That 
creed  rings  round  the  world,  on  every  land  and 


96  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  GOD. 

sea.  Its  abysmal  depths  of  living  meaning  wiU 
never  be  sounded  till  the  stars  are  old.  But  I  ask 
again :  "  Does  not  the  Nicene  Creed  speak  of  a 
serving  God?  "  Is  not  the  one  God,  in  the  three 
Personalities,  doing  something  all  through — mak- 
ing and  serving  His  worlds? 

I  say  I  am  but  a  trembling  and  ignorant  child, 
creeping,  I  trust  not  irreverently — certainly  hum- 
bly— along  the  edge  of  vast  abysses — the  'opara  xat 
'aopata — the  visible  and  invisible  depths  and  heights 
which  I  believe  our  Father  has  made  and  keeps. 
But  I  know  He  does  nothing  save  by  the  eternal 
and  immutable  law  of  His  own  personality — and  I 
know  fathers  serve.  It  is  the  load  upon  all  of  us 
who  are  fathers.  Do  we  complain?  Do  we  cast 
off  the  weak?  Do  we  deny  the  disobedient?  Do 
we  not  bear  our  burdens  and  make  no  sign?  Do 
we  not  still  hold  to  the  relationship,  and  knit  the 
broken  knots,  and  try  to  keep  the  jeweled  bond 
around  the  family  complete?  Well,  '■'  I  believe  in 
God  the  Father  Almighty" 

But  let  us  leave  these  heights  and  speak  of  men. 

I  say  we  are  all  agreed  that  the  life  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth,  which  He  declared  revealed  God — a 
thing  neither  the  world  nor  the  church  can  yet  un- 
derstand— is  the  divinely  ideal  life  for  men.     The 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  GOD.  gj 

acceptance  of  that  conclusion  is  the  sole  rational 
basis  for  the  existence  of  this  church  ;  for  our  being 
here  together;  for  our  bishops,  priests,  deacons, 
and  laymen ;  for  our  baptisms,  confirmations,  and 
communions. 

Well,  that  certainly  was  a  life  of  service !  The 
mysterious  Wrestler  from  the  beginning  with  men 
stepped  out  visibly  and  revealed  the  law.  "  The 
invisible  Powers  wrestle  with  men ;  have  done  so 
from  the  beginning,  will  do  so  to  the  end.  They 
wrestle  to  serve  and  to  deliver." 

How  coolly  we  put  it  all  by — "  Tell  me  Thy 
name"!  "Why  askest  thou  after  My  name?" 
Do  you  not  see  we  are  in  no  case  to  understand  it  ? 
Because  we  can  only  hear  what  our  ears  have  the 
power  to  hear. 

We  understand  Jesus,  Saviour,  in  a  small  de- 
gree, and  for  that  let  us  be  thankful !  "  We  are 
in  misery,  in  stress,  in  pain,  in  sin,  and  wandering, 
turned  out  of  our  Father's  house,  lost  sheep  and 
lost  children ;  and  He  has  come  to  save  us  out  of 
our  trouble."  That  is  a  great  deal!  Our  prayers, 
but  especially  our  modern  hymns,  are  full  of  that. 
We  are  grateful,  or  say  we  are,  that  Christ  suffered, 
so  that  I  may  not  suffer — grateful  that  He  saves  me 
from  what  I  deserve.     I  still  agree  with  Caiaphas 


98  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  GOD. 

that  it  is  better  another  should  suffer  than  that  I 
should. 

As  it  seems  to  me,  that  is  about  as  far  as  we 
have  ears  to  hear ;  as  far  as  we  can  understand  the 
name.  But  when  we  are  asked  to  go  on  and  ac- 
cept the  rest  of  the  name — Saviour  of  all  men — we 
do  not  understand ;  because  our  Lord  came  to  re- 
veal the  lazv  of  salvation.  For  He  was  very  plain 
about  it :  "  He  that  saveth  his  life  shall  lose  it :  and 
he  that  loseth  his  life  for  My  sake  and  the  gospel's 
shall  find  it." 

For,  as  I  take  it,  our  Lord  put  little  weight  on 
the  question  of  pain.  It  must  have  been  to  Him 
a  very  small  thing  indeed.  He  deliberately  chose 
it,  you  see.  I  think  that  "  church  of  the  future," 
when  it  comes,  will  get  away  beyond  our  present 
ideas  about  saving  from  sorrow,  labor,  or  trouble, 
as  the  end  of  the  salvation  of  Christ. 

Our  Father  in  heaven  must  be  full  of  labor  and 
sorrow,  of  care  and  pain  and  the  bitter  sense  of 
loss.  His  eye  is  never  closed  in  rest.  His  hand  is 
over  all  His  works.  He  grieves  over  the  sins  and 
wrongs  of  His  world.  He  has  a  vast  realm  to  ad- 
minister, and  He  takes  care  that  a  sparrow,  even, 
is  not  wronged.  Infinite  pain  in  the  infinite  heart 
of  God ! 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  GOD.  99 

Now  our  labor  and  care  and  anxiety  in  this 
world  are  all  spent  and  exhausted,  as  a  rule,  on 
the  effort  to  save  ourselves  from  pain.  That  is 
about  as  far  as  we  have  yet  attained.  We  are  in 
that  respect  just  where  poor  Jacob  was  at  the  ford 
of  the  little  Syrian  Jabbok ! 

Moralists  write  about  this ;  preachers  preach 
about  it ;  satirists  laugh  at  it.  We  are  loading  our- 
selves down,  and  making  our  lives  bitter,  narrow, 
comfortless,  and  slavish,  to  save  ourselves  from  pain. 
The  sight,  thoroughly  seen  and  appreciated,  is  piti- 
able. Beings  supposed  to  have  sense  actually  load- 
ing themselves,  and  groaning  as  they  crawl  under 
their  loads,  lest  they  should  have  to  carry  those 
loads ! 

One  of  the  two  or  three  most  enormously  and 
absurdly  rich  men  in  the  country — dead  now,  and 
enjoying  a  little  rest,  I  hope — said  to  me  once,  "  I 
envy  you."  "Envy  me?"  I  asked.  "Yes;  you 
are  a  free  man,  your  own  master,  and  doing  and 
saying  helpful  things  to  people  every  day ;  and  I 
am  like  a  blind  horse  in  a  bark-mill,  tramping  the 
same  monotonous  path  round  the  safe  that  contains 
the  deeds  and  securities." 

In  the  kindness  of  my  heart  I  offered  to  relieve 
him  at  once  of  some  part  of  his  trouble,  and  bear 


IOO  RESPONSIBILITY   OF  GOD. 

his  burden  like  a  Christian  brother,  as  St.  Paul 
commands  us. 

I  knew  exactly  where  five  millions  would  found 
a  university  to  do  enormous  good  and  make  his 
name  a  blessing  forever;  where  another  million 
would  endow  ten  missionary  bishoprics ;  where  two 
millions  more  would  build  one  creditable  cathedral, 
and  five  millions  another;  and  ten  millions  would 
be  invested  so  as  to  relieve  our  Missionary  Com- 
mittee from  the  stress  and  anxiety  they  suffer ;  and 
then  five  millions  more  could  be  soundly  invested 
so  as  to  produce  a  respectable  sum  toward  the  in- 
struction and  Christianizing  of  our  seven  million 
negroes. 

This  would  not  have  relieved  him  entirely — in- 
deed, of  only  a  fraction — of  his  load.  He  would 
still  have  been  staggering  under  a  burden  which 
would  crush  me.  You  may  be  surprised,  but 
it  is  nevertheless  the  fact,  that  he  politely  but 
peremptorily  declined  my  kindly  proposal,  and 
groaned  under  it  till  the  load  crushed  him,  and  left 
it,  just  as  heavy,  for  his  son  to  sweat  under  till  he 
too  is  dead! 

I  sometimes  think  that  nothing  must  so  bring 
sorrow  and  pity  to  the  sorrowful  and  pitiful  heart 
of  God  as  the  sight  of  men  like  my  friend,  who 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  GOD.  IOI 

load  themselves  down  with  such  back-breaking 
and  heart-crushing  loads,  and  obstinately  refuse 
help  from  heaven  or  earth ! 

And  then  the  idiocy  of  it.  For  they  are  under- 
going all  this  to  escape  a  possible  pain !  They  are 
toiling  to  escape  toil !  They  are  doing  slaves'  work 
to  keep  themselves  free !  And  lo !  the  end  comes, 
and  their  lives  have  had  no  more  outcome  and  less 
enjoyment  than  the  lives  of  their  own  grooms! 

That  God,  with  all  His  pity  and  tenderness, 
should  worry  Himself  much  over  the  labors  and 
sorrows  of  millionaires  is  too  much  to  expect,  when 
there  are  so  many  ways  open  by  which  they  can 
cease  to  be  millionaires.  "  How  hardly  does  a 
rich  man  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven!" 

But  the  pain  and  toil  of  men  to  escape  pain 
and  toil  are  always  tragical.  And  the  conventional 
gospel  that  our  Lord  came  to  proclaim,  as  the 
greatest  of  all  good  news — that  He  was  going  to 
save  them  from  all  trouble  by  taking  all  trouble 
upon  Himself — has  not  resulted  yet  in  any  great 
lessening  of  the  sum  of  human  anguish. 

The  conception  of  God  as  a  Being  supremely 
happy  and  supremely  self-pleasing,  who  one  day, 
out  of  the  kindness  of  His  heart,  determined  to 
take  charge  of  some  few,  at  least,  of  a  wretched 


102  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  GOD. 

race,  and  save  them  all  inconvenience  and  give 
them  an  eternal  "  good  time,"  with  nothing  to  do 
and  everything  to  get,  has  become  an  unthinkable 
conception,  I  take  it,  to  most  thinking  people. 
Nevertheless  it  is  the  conception,  in  some  more 
or  less  modified  form,  which  rules  and  commands 
acceptance  in  most  pulpits,  Protestant  and  Roman 
Catholic. 

Suppose  we  rise  to  the  other  conception — that 
this  world  is  a  world  of  stress  and  strain,  of  bitter 
sorrow  and  stinging  pain,  of  heavy,  groaning  loads, 
of  aching  hearts  and  broken  backs ;  that  our  Father 
made  it  so  because,  being  the  world  He  wanted  in 
His  wisdom  and  for  His  purposes,  He  must  make 
it  so  by  the  necessities  of  His  purpose. 

Suppose  its  pains  are  "growing-pains."  It 
must  be  wrestled  with  to  get  it  up  to  princedom. 
The  wrestle  is  long.  The  night  is  long — ages 
long,  as  men  count  ages!  And  in  the  wrestle  the 
awful  Wrestler  Himself  touches  and  lames. 

But  the  Maker  of  the  world  is  responsible  for 
His  world!  He  too  has  no  "happy  time"  with 
it,  I  think.  He  too  is  wrestling  the  long  night 
through.  And  to  teach  men  that  "  happiness  is  " 
not  "  our  being's  end  and  aim,"  He  reveals  His 
own  character  by  actually  coming  to  live  this  life. 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  GOD.  103 

Not  to  shun  pain  in  it,  but  cheerfully,  freely, 
gladly  to  accept  it  as  the  law.  "  Our  being's  end 
and  aim  "  is  to  get  up,  to  climb  higher,  to  ascend, 
by  any  path,  no  matter  how  toilsome.  Our  salva- 
tion is  not  deliverance  from  pain,  but  deliverance 
from  halfness,  low-downness.  Our  salvation  is  to 
be  raised.  "  If  I  be  lifted  up,  I  will  draw  all  men 
unto  Me."  He  was  "lifted  up,"  but  upon  a 
cross ! 

Let  us  disabuse  our  minds  of  pagan  ideas.  Our 
God  does  not  "  lie  beside  His  nectar,  careless  of 
mankind,"  like  the  gods  of  Greek  Olympus.  As 
to  the  gods  of  German  metaphysics,  I  personally 
know  nothing ;  nor  does  any  living  man — or  dead 
one  either,  for  that  matter.  The  only  God  I  know, 
the  only  God  that  any  sane  man  can  know,  I  think, 
is  Jesus,  who  was  born  in  Bethlehem,  and  was  in 
stress  and  strain  all  His  earthly  life! 

He  is  a  wrestling  God.  He  does  not  seem  to 
have  cared  to  be  "  happy."  He  does  not  seem  to 
have  thought  that  idleness,  wealth,  freedom  from 
care,  rich  food,  fine  houses,  fine  clothing,  the  re- 
gard or  reverence  of  men,  were  at  all  desirable  or 
necessary.  Let  us  not  destroy  the  force  of  this, 
and  lose  the  gospel,  by  the  poor  theological  con- 
clusion that  He  lived  this  sort  of  life  as  an  excep- 


104  RESPONSIBILITY  OF   GOD. 

tional,  temporary  thing  for  a  few  days,  all  the  time 
anxious  to  have  it  over  and  get  out  of  it,  so  that 
He  could  have  a  happy  time  again! 

Can  eternal  God  live  a  temporary  life?  Can 
He  play  a  character  in  a  stage-play?  Pardon  me. 
But  we  must  be  reverent ;  we  must  be  honest. 
"  Jesus  Christ  the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  for- 
ever " — there  is  no  dramatic  exhibition  for  a  few 
years  suggested  there! 

I  am  not  concerned  to  "  reconcile  "  all  this  with 
the  imaginations  of  the  metaphysicians.  I  have 
only  to  call  your  attention  to  the  fact  that  God  re- 
veals Himself  as  a  wrestling  God  from  Genesis  to 
Revelation. 

There  is  even  a  suggestion  that  He  is  worn  with 
the  strain:  "  Let  Me  go,  for  the  day  breaketh." 

But  He  owes  a  blessing,  and  acknowledges  the 
debt  and  the  power  of  the  sorely  tried  and  lamed 
world  upon  Him :  "  I  will  not  let  Thee  go,  except 
Thou  bless  me."  A  wrestling  God  in  a  wrestling 
world ! 

And  so  I  think  we  have  the  meaning  of  the 
world  and  our  own.  We  are  poor  and  very  far 
down  yet.  One  is  tempted  to  use  the  almost 
threadbare  words  of  our  "  working  hypothesis  " 
development  here.      They  will  fit  in  very  well,  if 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  GOD.  105 

you  will  try  the  experiment,  with  the  soundest 
Nicene  orthodoxy. 

We  can  surely  not  dream  that  any  of  us  are 
living  Christian  lives — I  mean  by  the  measure  our 
Lord  revealed.  Our  comfortable  lives,  or  our  lives 
which  we  are  straining  all  our  faculties  to  make 
comfortable — it  is  all  the  same — are  these  Christ- 
like?    Surely  we  are  semi- developed  Christians! 

Take  any  of  our  congregations  on  a  Sunday 
morning,  from  bishop  or  rector  through  all  the 
pews.  How  many  have  the  most  shadowy  like- 
ness to  the  idea  of  Christ?  Is  not  the  idea  of 
every  man  and  woman — I  will  not  say  of  every 
child,  for  "of  such  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven" — 
that  the  important  business  for  which  they  are  put 
into  the  world  is  to  make  themselves  comfortable, 
and  shun,  as  far  as  possible,  all  trouble  and  all 
pain?  And  if  they  are  especially  pious  and  de- 
vout, will  they  not  plead  with  God  to  help  them 
do  this  ? 

I  am  not  speaking  of  mere  respectable  animal 
men,  nor  of  the  pitiable  and  pitiful  women  whose 
personality  and  responsibility  begin  and  end  with 
what  is  called  "Society";  I  am  speaking  of  men 
with  ideas,  and  of  women  who  have  brains  under 
their  bonnets,  and  good  hearts  under  the  revers  of 


106  RESPONSIBILITY  OF   GOD. 

their  jackets,  and  some  true  faith  in  God  and  duty. 
Is  not  the  idea  this :  that  the  religion  of  Christ  is 
meant  to  comfort  and  help  them  out  of  or  under 
any  trouble  or  pain  they  may  have ;  that  they  are 
right  to  try  to  have  as  little  as  possible ;  and  that 
God,  who  has  infinite  hoards  of  happiness  which 
He  does  not  need,  ought  to  be  worshiped  and 
prayed  to  for  the  sufficient  supply  they  need  in 
sickness,  sorrow,  loss,  or  death? 

Now  consider.  Jesus  Christ  was  not  the  excep- 
tional Man.  It  is  you  and  I  that  are  exceptional. 
We  are  the  oddities,  He  is  normal.  He  conse- 
quently reveals  law ;  and,  being  God  and  Man  in 
one  Person,  He  reveals  eternal  law — that  is,  the 
law  of  God's  nature,  which  is  the  law  for  this  world, 
and  for  every  possible  and  conceivable  world. 

And  that  law  clearly  revealed  is  that  comfort  is 
not  the  highest  aim  here  or  anywhere  for  a  man, 
nor  for  a  divine  Man ;  that  salvation  is  not  deliver- 
ance from  pain  here  nor  anywhere ;  that  salvation 
is  victory — by  no  matter  what  toil  and  bitterness 
endured  ;  that  man,  God's  child,  made  in  the  image 
of  God,  is  not  a  pain-fearing  being,  but  a  wrest- 
ling and  a  conquering  being;  that  his  business  is 
to  get  up — to  become  a  prince,  to  have  power 
with  God  and  men,  and  to  prevail,  though  he  may 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  GOD.  1 07 

be  lamed,  crippled,  in  the  process ;  that  the  strain, 
wrestle,  laboring  of  congested  lungs  and  panting 
muscles  are  nothing  if  so  be  that  he  "prevail"; 
that  God  wrestles  also  like  a  man  till  the  breaking 
of  the  splendid  dawn ! 

So  you  have  the  law  of  human  life,  which  is 
the  law  of  the  universe,  revealed — the  law  of  re- 
sponsibility ! 

When  we  make  a  final  settlement  of  social  ques- 
tions which  we  are  dilettantizing  over  now,  it  will 
be  on  the  basis  of  that  law.  It  may  be  a  long  time 
in  coming,  but  it  is  bound  to  come  in  the  end.  We 
may  have  many  upheavals  and  many  even  bloody 
revolutions,  for  what  I  know,  before  the  end 
comes.  But  the  end  will  come  from  no  evolution 
— though  some  may  think  so — of  any  principles  of 
its  own,  much  less  of  any  bread-and-butter  and 
animal-comfort  principle  of  our  socialists. 

Let  me  state  it :  responsibility  is  destructive  of 
what  people  call  comfort.  The  more  intense  the 
sense  of  responsibility,  the  less  "comfort."  The 
only  beings  comfortable,  "  happy,"  in  the  sense  of 
our  political  economists,  are  animals  or  the  lowest 
races,  or  the  lowest  among  the  higher  races.  When 
all  sense  of  responsibility,  of  moral  obligation,  is 
gone,  moral  and  spiritual  pain  is  gone. 


108  RESPONSIBILITY  OF   GOD. 

To  be  "  perfectly  happy  " — in  the  sense  of  these 
people,  that  is — one  must  get  rid  of  all  conscience 
of  responsibility.  But  what  then  remains?  The 
happiness  of  a  swine.  The  higher  men  go,  the  in- 
tenser  their  sense  of  personality — that  is,  responsi- 
bility, obligation,  and  duty — the  more  full  of  care, 
anxiety,  and  pain  they  are,  the  more  unhappy. 

To  use  the  word  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  and 
carry  his  thought  higher,  the  more  "differentiated" 
any  being  is,  the  more  exposed  it  is  to  pain  and 
unhappiness.  The  highest  conceivable  being  is 
exposed  to  the  highest  conceivable  pain. 

But  the  pain  with  us  results  from  growing.  No 
pain,  no  rising.  "No  cross,  no  crown!"  How 
often  we  have  seen  those  words  put  up  in  church 
decorations  or  in  "  floral  decorations,"  without  the 
slightest  notion  of  their  profound  meaning! 

The  eternal  Man  was  "  lifted  up  "  to  draw  the 
generations  after  Him,  but  lifted  on  a  cross.  No 
man  can  be  "  lifted  up  "  otherwise;  no  people  can 
be,  no  people  ever  has  been. 

The  loftiest  men  since  the  beginning,  the  men 
crowned  and  sceptered,  have  been  the  men  who 
cheerfully,  but  from  afar,  took  sorrow,  pain,  and 
labor  on  them,  and  trod  the  footsteps  of  the  Man 
of  Galilee.     "For  the  salvation  of  their  souls?" 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  GOD.  109 

Oh,  surely,  if  you  know  what  the  salvation  of  a 
man's  soul  means.  But  I  do  not  think  they  much 
thought  of  that.  Their  prime  idea  was  the  Lord's. 
They  were  trying  to  save  other  men ;  trying  to 
help  up  and  on  the  lame,  the  weary,  and  the  hope- 
less. They  had — and  did  not  know  it  nor  care 
about  it — read  the  riddle  of  the  universe — that 
climbing  means  weariness ;  that  the  attainment  of 
the  upper  heights  means  pain ;  that  royalty  is  ser- 
vice; that  the  Creator  and  the  Father  has  a  uni- 
verse to  remake  and  regenerate  on  His  hands, 
("  develop,"  if  you  will ;  there  is  nothing  paralyz- 
ing in  a  word),  and  has  a  sore  struggle  doing  it ; 
and  that  those  who  are  called  His  sons  accept  the 
law — the  higher,  the  more  bitter  the  winds  blow, 
the  colder  the  long  snow-summits ;  but  the  sunlit 
splendor  of  the  dawn  must  be  reached,  not  for  rest 
or  enjoyment,  but  because  they  are  "  lifted  up," 
nearer  service  and  nearer  God,  though  the  soul 
goes  limping  over  Peniel! 


LECTURE  IV. 
RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN. 


/  am  not  alone,  because  the  Father  is  with  Me. 

John  xvi.  32. 


LECTURE   IV. 

RESPONSIBILITY    OF    MAN. 

QOME  time  ago  we  had  in  our  newest  city — 
^  the  newest  city  in  the  world,  indeed — a  thing 
called  a  fair — the  Columbian  Fair. 

Among  the  attractions  to  draw  people  and  their 
half-dollars  to  this  fair  there  was,  besides  "  the 
Midway  Plaisance,"  with  its  alleged  Turkish  danc- 
ing-women and  its  alleged  Hindu  nautch-girls,  a 
show  called  the  "  World's  Parliament  of  Reli- 
gions." 

All  the  "  religions  "  in  the  world  were  invited 
most  politely  to  come  there  and  display  them- 
selves and  say  their  best  say,  and  tell  how  they 
came  to  be  "  religions  "  at  all. 

Hindu  yogis,  Mohammedan  dervishes,  Roman 

Catholic  cardinals,  Buddhist  bonzes  from   China, 

and  "  mahatmas  "  (whatever  they  are)  from  Arabia 

were  invited  to  disport  themselves  side  by  side 

113 


114  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN. 

with  Presbyterian  and  Unitarian  doctors  of  divin- 
ity, with  Mormon  elders  and  archbishops  of  the 
Orient,  and  show  a  waiting  and  eager  world  which 
religion  of  all  had  the  most  to  say  for  itself,  and 
was,  on  the  whole,  the  most  picturesque  and  pretty 
specimen  of  "  religion  "  now  existent. 

Altogether  it  was  the  most  astonishing  side- 
show of  a  remarkable  fair,  and  could  have  been 
imagined  and  attempted  only  in  the  freshest  and 
youngest  community  on  earth — a  community 
which  has  not  yet  quite  found  out  what  itself 
means,  is  dimly  groping,  mostly  on  all-fours,  to- 
ward a  somewhat  indistinct  conclusion,  but  which, 
by  its  very  existence,  as  the  gathering-place  of  all 
men — a  sort  of  colluvies  gentium — has  not  settled 
the  question  of  any  divine  purpose  and  meaning 
in  itself,  much  less  in  the  world;  and  yet,  never- 
theless, has  a  divine  purpose  and  meaning,  which 
in  due  time,  and  perhaps  after  much  misery  and 
many  stripes,  will  appear. 

Well,  the  fair  was  held,  and  the  parliament  was 
held,  with  results.  The  outcome  of  it  all  has  not 
yet  been  published  to  a  waiting  world.  Roman 
cardinals  remain  Roman  cardinals  still,  and  Hindu 
yogis  are  just  as  ragged  and  smell  just  as  strong 
as  ever,  and  the  entire  generation  of  cranks  re- 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN.  I  I  5 

main  cranks  still,  and  seem  to  be  continuing  their 
species  numerously. 

But  the  story  had  gone  abroad  into  all  lands 
that  "  the  West"  is  rich.  Indeed,  it  is  a  super- 
stition even  in  Europe  that  all  Americans  are 
millionaires.  I  wish  we  were — at  least  that  bish- 
ops were!  How  our  missionary  work  would 
drive  forward  were  that  the  case ! 

So  the  hungry  children  of  the  East  came 
swarming  with  all  their  rags  and  all  the  popula- 
tions and  odors  thereof — came  swarming  to  the 
"Streets  of  Cairo"  and  the  "Convent  of  La  Ra- 
bida,"  and  all  the  other  shows — Chinamen,  Jav- 
anese, Spanish  monks,  Buddhists  and  Brahmans 
from  Hindustan,  picturesque  and  ragged  Syrians 
from  Jerusalem,  and  venerable  rabbis  from  Poland 
arm  in  arm  with  still  more  long-bearded  and  un- 
kempt muftis  from  everywhere  except  Constan- 
tinople ! 

They  came  for  those  new  Columbian  fifty-cent 
pieces,  and  to  exhibit  incidentally  their  "  religion." 
Nowhere  but  in  the  wildest  dream  could  such  an 
exhibition  be  taken  as  serious. 

Of  course  it  was  not  serious  to  the  gentle,  low- 
voiced  children  of  the  East.  They  were  after  the 
spoils  of  the  West,  and  many  of  them  were  left — 


I  1 6  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN 

as  they  no  doubt  were  willing  to  be — stranded 
upon  our  hospitable  and  happy  shores. 

Many  of  us  have  no  doubt  had  experience  of 
these  picturesque  waifs  and  strays  of  the  great 
fair — the  flotsam  and  jetsam  of  the  famous  "  Par- 
liament of  Religions  " — at  our  back  doors  begging 
for  cold  victuals  and  old  clothes,  and  without  a 
solitary  grain  of  profound  Eastern  psychology  or 
any  practical  doctrine  of  reincarnation,  an  ounce 
of  "  theosophy  "  or  a  spark  of  "  astral  spirit,"  con- 
cealed about  their  fragrant  persons! 

One  of  the  fragments  of  this  drift,  whose  melo- 
dious name  I  have  several  times  seen  in  print, 
professed  to  be  a  monk  of  some  sort — Brahman  or 
Buddhist,  I  know  not  which ;  but  for  the  present  a 
peculiar  kind  of  monk,  emancipated  from  all  rules 
that  usually  govern  monks.  There  are  such  "  dis- 
pensations," I  understand,  among  all  sorts  of 
monks.  He  could  eat  with  anybody  who  gave 
him  anything  nice  to  eat,  and  drink  anything  nice 
that  was  going,  and  live  in  general  intercourse 
with  us  benighted  Christians,  and  take  no  harm, 
because  his  ecclesiastical  superior  in  India  had 
dispensed  him  from  his  vows  for  this  time  and 
occasion  only ;  or  else  because — which  sometimes 
occurs — being  an  "  order  "  of  monkery  all  by  him- 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN.  I  I  7 

self,  and  therefore  his  own  "  superior,"  he  had  just 
dispensed  himself! 

He  was  very  picturesque.  I  do  not,  I  say, 
know  whether  he  was  Brahman  or  Buddhist  or 
Mohammedan,  though  I  think  certainly  not  the 
last.  But  it  is  of  no  consequence.  He  was  a 
monk  of  some  sort,  and  wore  a  long  woolen  skirt 
down  to  his  heels  and  a  roll  of  yellow  stuff  on  his 
head,  and  people  were  interested  in  him  on  that 
account  to  start  with.  (A  man's  "  environment " 
may  sometimes  have  great  influence  on  other  peo- 
ple and  very  little  upon  himself.) 

Women  especially  were  interested  in  him. 
Women  always  are  profoundly  interested  in 
monks.  I  think  they  always  will  be.  There  is 
here  a  psychological  question  more  subtle  and 
more  interesting  than  any  like  question  in  Bud- 
dhism or  Brahmanism.  It  deserves  a  book  all  by 
itself  by  some  wise  and  learned  man,  so  /  leave  it. 

One  lady — cultivated,  thoughtful,  an  American 
woman  of  the  best  type — told  me  how  much  she 
was  impressed  by  this  mild-eyed  son  of  the  Pun- 
jab, and  how  devoted  and  pious  and  spiritual- 
minded  he  seemed  to  be. 

She  told  me  how  he  admired  the  enormous 
energy  and  victorious  march  of  this  Western  civil- 


I  1 8  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN. 

ization.  To  be  sure,  our  religion  was  nothing — a 
thing  of  yesterday.  It  could  have  no  influence 
on  the  mind — the  gigantic  mind — of  the  Hindu 
trained  and  fed  on  theosophy  and  reincarnations, 
and  guided  generally  by  "  mahatmas  "  and  astral 
spirits — the  lofty  and  spiritual-minded  Hindu,  who 
adored  Siva  and  Kali  and  Juggernaut,  and  who 
was  quite  content  to  be  a  slave,  and  make  slave's 
slaves  of  his  women.  But  we  were  far  before  the 
Hindu  in  some  things — our  machinery,  our  steam- 
engines,  our  electric  dynamos,  and  the  like. 

Then  he  was  staying  here  in  the  United  States, 
and  hoping  to  get  help  to  establish  an  Industrial 
School — a  School  of  Mechanics  and  Engineering, 
of  McCormick's  Reapers  and  Singer's  Sewing- 
machines,  of  Patent  Plows  and  Remington  Type- 
writers— for  his  poor  countrymen.  In  these  and 
such  as  these,  according  to  him,  lay  the  future 
hope  of  the  millions  of  Hindustan.  Here  was 
where  they  acknowledged  our  superiority.  (I 
think  he  did  not  mention  Pears',  or  indeed  any 
kind  of  soap.) 

Not  at  all  in  Bibles  (modern  thing,  your  Bible!), 
not  in  creed  or  prayers  (a  poor  thing  of  yester- 
day, your  creed  and  prayers! — read  the  hymns  to 
Agni  and  Varuna),  but  in  steam-engines,  electric 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN.  I  1 9 

motors,  in  trolley-cars  and  the  like,  lay  the  re- 
demption of  Hindustan,  as  far  as  we  uninspired 
Westerns  could  redeem  it.  In  return  for  these 
they  would  send  us  some  "  mahatmas  "  ;  and  there 
is  as  yet  no  tariff  on  "  mahatmas." 

I  reminded  my  friend  first  that  of  all  human 
creatures  alive  the  Hindu  is  the  biggest  liar  (the 
Syrian  always  excepted) ;  that  he  really  cannot 
speak  truth  save  by  accident;  that  all  writers  who 
know  our  Hindu  cousins  testify  with  one  voice  to 
this,  even  down  to  Mr.  R.  Kipling;  and  that  the 
higher  his  caste  and  the  more  religious  the  Hindu 
is,  the  more  measureless  liar  he  is! 

Of  course  I  would  not  venture  to  say  that  this 
gentleman,  who  had  come  all  the  way  to  our  bar- 
barous country,  and  had  run  the  risk  of  deadly 
defilement  and  the  spoiling  of  his  Brahm  by  being 
among  us,  was  deliberately  deceiving;  but  it  was 
nevertheless  the  fact  that  the  British  govern- 
ment had  established  universities  and  colleges  and 
schools  of  the  very  kind  he  named,  and  was  try- 
ing to  establish  more  among  his  people ;  and  one 
of  the  greatest  difficulties — indeed,  the  most  seri- 
ous of  all — was  their  absurd,  wicked,  and  inhuman 
system  of  caste,  which  stood  in  the  way,  and  their 
ridiculous  religion,  which  barred  the  road  against 


120  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN. 

all  human  investigation,1  and  tied  a  man  helpless 
in  the  dirt-universe,  which  was  mightier  than  he, 
and  which  he  dare  not  investigate.  Suppose  his 
reaper  should  cut  off  a  cobra's  head !  Suppose  his 
locomotive  should  run  down  a  cow!  The  conse- 
quences are  awful,  considering  the  religion  which 
makes  cobra  and  cow  alike  an  incarnation  of  Brahm. 

"But,"  I  said,  "here  is  what  ought  to  be  said, 
with  all  strong,  honest  utterance,  to  a  soul 
drowned  in  worm-eaten  shams  and  conceit  like 
this  poor  man ;  to  a  soul  for  whom  Christ  died, 
steeped  and  stupid  in  hereditary  lies : 

'* '  Your  people  are,  all  things  considered,  the 
most  abject  people  on  earth.  We  have  your 
vaunted  "  sacred  books,"  and  can  read  them 
as  well  as  you.  There  is  absolutely  nothing  in 
them!  Your  hymns  to  Agni  {Ignis),  the  fire 
you  cook  your  rice  on,  your  chants  to  Varuna 
('oopavo?,  thesky  and  clouds),  are  the  cleanest  of 
your  litanies.  There  are  others  of  your  sacred 
books — your  real,  practical  sacred  books  of  your 
practical  religion  (Sivaism,  Saktalsm) — of  unutter- 
able vileness,  "  their  manners  none,  their  customs 
beastly;"  and  your  religious  shows  and  proces- 
sions, your  temples  and  their  ornaments,  and  the 

1    See  "  Code  of  Manu,"/0JJ7>«. 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN.  12  I 

sacred  chariots  and  thrones  of  your  idols  are  un- 
imaginable for  their  foulness  by  any  soul  in  this 
country ;  and  yet  you  exhibit  all  these  vile  things 
as  holy  before  the  eyes  of  your  children.  Your 
sacred  rites  corrupted  ancient  Rome  to  infamy. 
They  would  have  corrupted  modern  England  but 
for  the  stalwart  faith  in  the  Lord  Christ  which 
declared  your  gods  to  be  devils!1 

"  '  For  all  the  historic  period  you  have  been 
slaves.  Your  own  native  rulers  have  been  mon- 
sters of  brutality,  bloodthirstiness,  and  obscenity. 
Only  under  some  foreign  conqueror,  from  Alex- 
ander down,  have  you  had  a  glimpse  of  justice,  of 
order,  or  of  settled  rule — a  slight  suggestion  that 
the  world  was  not  managed  by  beasts. 

"  '  Your  "  religion,"  as  you  call  the  consecrated 
imbecility  and  foulness  which  has  dominated  your 
unhappy  souls  and  bodies,  has  chained  you  down 
victims  to  any  human  animal  strong  enough  to 
lord  it  over  you.  When  he  has  proved  himself 
strong  enough,  you  have  gone  on  all-fours  and 
licked  his  feet. 

1  I  need  scarcely  say  that  the  religion  of  Hindustan  has  not 
been  Vedic  for  centuries.  The  Vedas,  the  Brahmanas  (sacrificial 
and  priestly  forms)  are  childish.  The  sacred  books  of  the  prac- 
tical religion  (which  is  the  foulest  idolatry)  are  worthy  of  the  reli- 
gion of  Siva  and  Kali. 


122  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN 

" '  In  one  of  the  fairest  and  fruitfulest  lands  on 
earth  you  have  lived  in  the  mire  for  ages. 

"  '  The  only  monuments  of  your  labor  are  the 
temples  of  your  brutal  gods  and  the  palaces  of 
your  almost  as  brutal  rajas,  whom  nevertheless 
you  have  considered  divine. 

"  '  You  have  starved  in  your  wretchedness  and 
rotted  in  your  cholera.  You  have  let  the  beasts 
destroy  you  and  the  serpents  poison  you.  You 
have  had  no  energy,  no  manliness,  and  no  hope. 

" '  There  are  two  hundred  millions  of  you,  and 
two  hundred  thousand  Englishmen  govern  you ; 
and  for  the  first  time  in  all  your  recorded  history 
they  have  given  you  a  decent,  orderly,  just  gov- 
ernment, so  that  a  ryot's  rice-field  is  securely  his 
own,  his  mud  hut  and  his  wife  and  children  belong 
to  himself,  and  you  are  no  more  allowed  to  burn 
women  alive  as  a  holy  obligation. 

" '  And  you,  and  such  as  you — the  Brahmans  and 
the  sacred  men,  the  monks  and  holy  men — are, 
in  all  ways  you  can,  putting  obstacles  in  the  way ; 
taking  advantage  of  the  educational  opportunities 
given  you  by  Christians,  and  then  sneering  at  the 
hand  that  gives  them  and  at  the  principles  which 
are  trying  to  save  your  wretched  people  into  some- 
thing human ;  in  your  hereditary  conceit  and  im- 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN  123 

becile  slavery  to  the  idea  of  your  own  superiority 
— what  you  call,  poor  creatures !  your  "  divin- 
ity " — doing  your  utmost  against  the  detestable 
Christian  and  revolutionary  principle  which  de- 
clares a  Pariah  just  as  good  as  a  lazy  Brahman 
with  his  holy  string! 

"  '  No !  It  is  not  machinery  you  want,  but  Chris- 
tianity. Strange  as  it  may  seem  to  you,  that  is 
nevertheless  the  practical  fact.  For  mind,  Chris- 
tianity is  in  no  sense  a  religion,  as  you  Orientals 
take  religion.  It  is  not  a  means  of  getting  a  man 
out  of  trouble  and  toil  and  heartbreak.  It  is 
rather  an  arrangement  which  puts  him  into  these 
neck-deep.  The  things  you  call  religion  have  for 
their  end  the  saving  men  from  labor,  pain,  and 
struggle.  This  strange  religion  of  the  West — this 
religion  of  the  Man  who  worked  in  the  carpenter's 
shop  at  Nazareth — calls  them  to  all  three;  pro- 
claims all  three  blessed,  human,  and  divine;  pro- 
claims them  victorious,  royal,  masterful  over  a 
universe  governed  by  reason,  as  we  believe  it — 
not  by  brute  force,  as  you  believe.'  " 

For  the  religions  of  the  East  all  have  the  same 
dread  of  personality.  To  be  rid  of  this  burden  is 
to  be  blessed.  To  drop  into  the  infinite  life  of  the 
impersonal,  as  a  snowflake   drops   in   the  ocean; 


124  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN 

all,  to  float  as  the  same  drop  vaporized  floats  into 
the  fleecy  cloud-flocks  of  even  and  disappears  in 
the  splendors  of  the  sunset ;  to  cease  to  be  person- 
ally conscious ;  to  be  rid  of  pain  and  toil,  rid  of  all 
duty  and  responsibility,  and  dissolve  into  the  in- 
finite azure  deeps — this  is  attained  beatification, 
this  is  Nirvana  and  everlasting  bliss! 

To  cease  to  have  anything  to  do,  anything  to 
say;  to  be  rid  of  responsibility,  which  means  to 
be  rid  of  personality — the  words  are  equivalent — 
makes  this  heaven  of  imbecility  man's  highest  hope, 
and  you  have  destroyed  all  we  Western  races  call 
manliness,  courage,  energy,  and  whatsoever  else 
is  high  and  noble.  The  world  is  too  much  for 
humanity.  It  becomes  its  master.  Man  stolidly 
accepts  slavery,  disease,  hunger,  the  poisonous 
reptile,  the  jungle,  man-eating  tiger.  He  crouches 
helpless  before  any  brutal  thing  in  nature  or  in 
man.  He  submits,  not  nobly  protesting,  like  a 
knight  smitten  down  in  the  strife,  fighting  to  the 
last  gasp ;  but  like  a  whipped  cur  who  can  only 
crouch  and  moan  and  sneak  and  whine  for  pity 
from  a  savage  master! 

There  is  no  conquest  of  the  world  in  Aim,  no 
mastering  of  nature  possible.  He  deifies  the  cruel 
powers  that  destroy  him,  and  carves  monstrous 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN.  12$ 

images  of  obscene  and  bloody  things,  and  wor-  I 
ships  the  bestial  and  the  foul ;  for  the  bestial  and 
the  foul  seem  strongest,  and  there  is  no  call  from 
the  divine  to  resist.  He  digs  out  his  caves  of  Ele- 
phantis,  puts  his  monstrous  gods  there,  and  flees 
the  sunlight  and  the  green  earth. 

Meanwhile   the    unbroken  jungles    shelter    the  I 
venomous  cobra  and  the  tiger,  and  keep  safe  the  / 
seed-beds   of   the   pestilence.      He   pollutes   with 
filth  the  waters  of  his  sacred  river,  and  lays  out  J 
his  dying  by  its  side,  while  the  corpses  are  whirled 
away  on  the  yellow  wave,  shadowed  by  the  over- 
hanging obscene  birds  that  batten  on  the  ghastly 
forms.     For  the  river  is  too  much  for  him.     He 
has  not  thought  of  restraining  it.     It  overwhelms 
his  fields,  and  sweeps  his  mud  hovel  and  his  little 
harvests  of  rice   away ;  so  he  calls  it  sacred,  and 
worships  Gunga  as  a  god !    The  man  of  the  Chris-  j 
tian  West  comes,  "  levees  "   Gunga  as  he  levees  I 
the  Mississippi,  and  still  the   Hindu   believes,  for 
the  present,  that  Gunga  is  a  god !      Brahm  is  far 
away,  impersonal,  and  also  helpless.     Some  day 
the  Hindu  will  be  lost  to  toil  and  sorrow,  name 
and  fame,  in  the  immensity  of  Brahm — absorbed  ; 
a  personality  no  more. 

Conceive  a  people  whose  religion,  so  called,  is 


126  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN. 

based  upon  the  idea  that  existence  is  the  sorest 
curse;  that  personality  is  punishment  and  the 
heaviest  penalty;  that  to  cease  to  be  is  the  su- 
preme good !  Will  such  a  people  invent,  improve, 
advance,  conquer?  There  comes  now  and  then  to 
the  surface  a  sign  that  here  and  there  among  our- 
selves there  exist  people  who  can  talk  and  even 
write  sentimentalisms  about  things  they  do  not 
understand,  and  feign  to  exploit  "the  Oriental  reli- 
gions." They  affect  even  to  sneer  at  missions  and 
missionaries,  and  admire  bonzes,  and  talk  about 
mahatmas. 

Now  we  know  India  pretty  well.  She  has  not 
been  hidden  from  the  world's  eye  all  these  cen- 
turies. We  know  what  her  religions  have  done  for 
her — where  they  have  left  her  people — and  we  can 
make  up  our  judgments  upon  what  strong,  just, 
righteous,  and  somewhat  Christian  rule  has  done 
for  a  people  abject — made  so  inevitably  by  their 
"  religion  " ! 

It  is  the  preeminence  of  Christ's  religion  that  it 
emphasizes  and  demands  the  name  of  the  person : 
"What  is  thy  name?"  It  calls  out  the  "I"  to 
face  the  situation.  No  teacher  was  ever  so  ag- 
gressively personal  as  Jesus.  He  preaches  con- 
tinually His  own  personality.      He  cries,  "  Come 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN  \2J 

unto  Me;"  "I  will  give  you  rest ;"  "  Take  My  yoke 
upon  you;"  "/am  the  good  shepherd;"  "/am 
the  door;"  "/am  the  true  vine;"  "/am  the  way, 
the  truth,  and  the  life;"  "No  man  cometh  unto 
the  Father  but  by  Me."  It  is  because  we  have 
heard  it  all  so  often,  I  suppose ;  because  it  has 
become  a  part  of  our  unconscious  thinking,  that 
we  are  not  startled  by  the  strangeness  of  this  per- 
sistent and  matter-of-fact  preaching  of  Himself. 

There  is  this  peculiarity,  also,  about  His  deal- 
ings with  men  about  Him,  that  He  calls  out  the 
personality  of  all  who  approach  Him.  In  some 
cases  it  seems  as  if  the  miracle  were  impossible  till 
the  personality  assert  itself.  It  is  will  on  His 
part :  "  Lord,  if  Thou  wilt,  Thou  canst  make  me 
clean."  It  is  faith  on  the  suppliant's  part:  "If 
thou  canst  believe,  all  things  are  possible  to  him 
who  believetk."  The  conscious  assertion  of  the 
selfhood,  of  the  individuality,  is  called  for — the 
two  persons  must  recognize  each  other,  and  face 
each  other,  and  know  each  other  by  name  before 
there  can  be  effect. 

Is  not  the  act  of  faith  itself  a  supreme  realiza- 
tion of  a  man's  own  individuality,  and  a  strong 
grasp  upon  the  individuality  of  the  Deliverer? 
"  I  will  not  let  Thee  go,  except  Thou  bless  me." 


128  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN. 

"Who  gave  you  this  name?" — the  Catechism  is 
true  to  the  religion  of  personality.  "  A  white  stone, 
and  in  the  stone  a  new  name  written,"  "  the  names 
written  in  the  Lamb's  book  of  life  " — are  not  these 
things  all  on  the  same  line? 

Is  not  personality  sacred  because  God  is  infinite 
Personality?  And  because  man  is  made  in  the 
image  of  God,  and  therefore  a  person,  is  not  his 
personality  sacred  in  the  eyes  of  God  ? 

For  mark,  God  never  overrides  the  personality 
of  man.  He  persuades,  He  leads  in  wise — in- 
finitely wise — ways,  and  the  convincing  Spirit 
whispers  in  the  heart,  and  Jesus  stands  forever  at 
the  door  and  knocks ;  but  the  independence  of  the 
personality  is  never  outraged.  A  man  shall  be  de- 
livered by  his  own  choice.  He  shall  climb  to  the 
princedoms  of  God,  but  he  shall  be  the  "  I  "  and 
say  the  "  I  "  at  every  step.1 

With  a  wonderful  care  the  Eternal  Personality 
treats  the  finite.  No  angel  overrides  the  poor 
human  will,  nor  breaks  into  the  sacred  circle  of  a 
man's  individuality.  Only  devils  from  the  outer 
chaos  do  that,  and  are  cast  out  when  the  Lord  of 
persons  speaks  the  word  of  power  to  guard  His  own. 

1  In  nothing  does  Calvinism  more  outrage  Christianity  than  in 
its  doctrine  of  "invincible  grace." 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN.  129 

One  word  here.  Are  we  always  reverent  to 
the  personality  ourselves?  Do  not  well-meaning 
people  who  go  to  help  in  warm  brotherly  kindness 
often  trample  rudely  and  thoughtlessly  upon  the 
feelings — that  is,  the  individuality — of  the  poor  or 
the  suffering  they  would  aid?  Do  they  consider 
always  the  reserves  and  reticences  of  the  heart  to 
which  a  soul  with  a  name  is  entitled  ?  Do  not  we 
sometimes  brusquely,  and  in  unmannerly  fashion, 
break  into  the  sacred  solitary  rooms  in  which  the 
soul  sits  alone — or  at  least  try  to?  Remember 
Jesus  "stands  at  the  door,  and  knocks."  He  will 
never  enter  till  the  door  is  opened.  If  you  would 
have  Him  guest  you  must  invite  Him. 

Children  are  often  wronged  grievously  by  most 
loving  parents.  They  have  a  right  to  themselves. 
Their  personality  is  sacred.  They  have  a  right  to 
their  childish  reticences  and  the  little  hedge  that 
protects  their  individuality.  It  is  frightful  to  hear 
such  an  expression  as  "  breaking  a  child's  will." 
God  breaks  no  man's  will.  He  seeks  to  make  the 
will  right.  Let  us  older  folk  be  careful  about 
offending  "  one  of  these  little  ones,"  who  are  per- 
sons in  the  image  of  Christ,  and  have  names  by 
which  He  calls  them,  while  their  angels  do  always 
behold  the  face  of  the  Father. 


130  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN. 

There  is  a  terrible  loneliness  in  personality.  The 
soul  bears  its  heaviest  loads  alone.  It  enjoys  its 
profoundest  blessedness  alone.  It  suffers  alone, 
it  repents  alone,  and  it  leaves  the  world  alone. 
Friends  may  be  very  dear  and  very  desirous  to 
aid  or  sympathize.  "  The  heart  knoweth  his  own 
bitterness."  One  must  wrestle  alone.  There  are 
times  when  the  nearest  and  dearest — our  heart's 
best  brother — can  only  stand  without.  Kind 
hands  may  be  eager  to  clasp  ours,  and  loving 
lips  desire  to  comfort,  and  ready  feet  to  follow  us 
to  the  brink ;  but  each  of  us  must  step  down  into 
the  dark,  cold  water  alone. 

I  take  it,  in  its  real  sense,  no  man  ever  heard  a 
genuine  confession.  There  are  chambers  in  the 
soul  into  which  no  human  foot  can  enter — of  dear- 
est friend  or  holiest  priest. 

For  in  the  extremest  assertion  of  personality 
there  can  be  but  one  Companion.  In  the  night- 
wrestle  the  antagonist  is  Jesus.  In  His  own 
wrestle  to  come  He  tells  His  friends,  "  The  hour 
cometh,  yea,  is  now  come,  that  ye  shall  be  scat- 
tered, every  man  to  his  own,  and  shall  leave  Me 
alone :  and  yet  I  am  not  alone,  because  the  Father 
is  with  Me."  In  the  vast  halls  of  loneliness  the  only 
sound  is  the  echo  of  the  footsteps  of  God! 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN  131 

The  human  personality  and  the  divine  have 
alliance.  "  If  I  ascend  up  into  heaven,  Thou  art 
there :  if  I  make  my  bed  in  hell,  behold  Thou  art 
there  "  also.  The  human  has  something  of  the 
awfulness  of  the  divine. 

It  is  a  trust,  this  personality,  and  a  trust  to 
make  one  tremble ;  for  as  far  as  we  know,  it  is 
never  recalled.  A  man  can  never  get  away  from 
his  past.  "  The  dead  past,"  in  the  pitiless  strength 
of  human  personality,  is  not  dead  and  has  no  dead 
to  bury. 

A  man's  words  and  works  are  stamped  with  his 
own  individuality,  branded  with  his  brand,  and 
marked  with  his  own  signet.  He  cannot  make  the 
word  unspoken,  nor  the  deed  undone.  He  puts 
something  of  his  personality  into  all  he  does,  and 
there  back  of  him  they  lie,  the  creations  of  his  own 
will  gone  out  into  the  yesterdays,  but  living  still. 

Even  Almighty  God — I  say  it  reverently — can- 
not destroy  a  fact,  cannot  make  that  undone  which 
has  been  done.  He  can  forgive  the  sin — "  cut  off 
the  entail  of  sin,"  as  Jeremy  Taylor  speaks;  but 
He  cannot  make  the  sin  not  to  have  been  com- 
mitted. So  a  man  projects  himself  and  stamps 
himself  upon  the  universe.  It  is  a  compelled 
scientific  conclusion  that  the  words  we  say  here 


132  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN 

will  still  exist  in  the  material  earth  while  it  shall 
stand.  We  are  changing  the  relations  of  the  atoms 
about  us  every  word  we  speak,  and  that  changes 
the  relation  of  others ;  these  are,  of  course,  mingled 
with  other  changes  and  to  ears  are  lost;  but  we 
know  that  we  hear  but  a  small  fraction  of  the 
sounds  about  us,  and  it  is  quite  conceivable,  as  a 
purely  scientific  matter,  that  there  may  be  ears 
which  hear  all  the  noises,  and  the  shouts  and 
chargings,  the  volleying  repulse,  the  thunder  of 
the  cannon,  and  the  saber-clash  of  the  last  charge 
at  Waterlo.o. 

It  is  curious  that  they  are  not  the  incidents  of 
yesterday  which  age  brooding  by  the  fireside  re- 
members best,  but  the  incidents  of  childhood,  the 
friends  long  dead,  the  acts  and  words  gone  into 
the  past;  and  more  than  curious — suggestive  of 
things  terrible — that  some  boyish  escapade,  some 
little  mean  thing  done,  which  had  no  special  con- 
sequences, comes  back  more  vividly  to  torment 
the  conscience  than  some  large  wrong  of  man- 
hood! 

It  has  a  terrible  side  to  it,  this  personal  life.  It 
makes  all  things  so  frightfully,  uncompromisingly 
real.  "  I  did  this ;  I  said  that.  I  have  issued  the 
coin  from  the  mint  of  my  personality.     I  cannot 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN.  133 

recall.  I  have  created  something.  God  help  me 
if  it  be  evil!  The  Lord  deliver  me  from  my- 
self!" 

But  this  stern,  masterful  religion  of  the  Lord 
Christ  leaves  us  no  escape  from  the  awfulness  of 
the  gift,  nor  from  its  terrible  responsibilities.  In- 
stead it  tells  us  to  thank  God  for  it ;  to  strive  more 
and  more  for  its  larger  measure ;  that  our  blessed- 
ness comes  from  the  intensity  and  aggressiveness 
of  our  personality  ;  that  it  is  a  growth  into  the  like- 
ness of  eternal  God  to  become  more  and  more  a 
person,  an  "  I,"  with  every  personal  trait  and  qual- 
ity alive — will,  affection,  faith,  love,  hope  ;  that  the 
word  "  I  will  arise  "  is  forever  the  word  of  power 
that  delivers  when  the  lost  child  goes  home. 

And  now  upon  the  world  and  men  see  the  effect. 
There  is  but  one  companionship  eternal  for  the 
human  person — namely,  the  divine  Person.  So 
sure  is  this  that  the  divine  Person  took  human 
nature — that  is,  all  human  personality — into  one 
Person,  never  to  be  divided ! 

Man  walks  with  God.  God  encourages  him  to 
walk  like  God ;  shows  him  his  responsibilities  as  a 
person  in  a  world  made  and  ruled  by  a  Person ; 
shows  him  his  obligations  and  moral  responsi- 
bilities, and  urges  him  up  and  on. 


134  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN 

Well,  in  some  faint  and  half-hearted  way  the 
Christian  peoples  have  seen  this,  and  are  trying  to 
fulfil  their  obligations  in  the  high  place  God  has 
given  them.  Christianity,  because  it  is  a  personal 
religion,  is  aggressive.  It  means  will.  It  counts 
strength  good ;  not  as  such  only — it  has  small  re- 
gard for  dumb  or  irrational  force.  Christ  ordered 
the  tempest  to  close  its  bluster,  remember.  The 
highest  force,  the  force  to  be  reverenced  because 
it  is  ordered,  rational,  and  spiritual,  the  force  to 
be  obeyed,  is  the  force  of  a  personal  will.  Power 
displaying   itself   as   power   is   not   on   God's   nor 


man's  side.  It  is  diabolic,  rather.  Power  that 
speaks  conscience,  orderly  will,  help  and  not  harm, 
salvation,  not  destruction,  is  the  power  our  faith 
holds  divine. 

I  have  heard  wonder  expressed  that  the  religion 
of  the  mild,  pitiful,  and  gentle  Jesus  should  be  the 
religion  of  the  warrior  peoples,  the  aggressive,  con- 
quering peoples  of  the  world.  One  may  remem- 
ber a  book  published  some  years  ago  by  a  very 
interesting  man,  who  tried  to  construct  a  new  re- 
ligion from  Brahmanism  and  Christianity.  The 
book  was  called  "The  Oriental  Christ."  The  ob- 
ject was  to  show  that  the  mild  Hindu  is  repelled 
by  our  aggressive,  masterful  Western  Christ,  and 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN.  135 

that  to  convert  the  Hindus  we  need  to  present  only 
the  tender  and  pitiful  Christ. 

Possibly  some  of  us  thought  there  was  more  of 
sentimentalism  than  of  religion  in  this.  Yet  the 
writer  was  clearly  honest  and  sincere;  and  there 
are  those  among  ourselves  who  have  been  slow  to 
see  that  the  Lion  of  the  tribe  of  Judah,  the  Cap- 
tain of  the  Lord's  host,  and  "  the  King  of  kings, 
and  Lord  of  lords,"  with  His  "  vesture  dipped  in 
blood,"  is  none  other  than  the  Nazarene — the 
Lamb  slain  from  of  old. 

But  why  should  it  surprise  us  that  a  religion   1 
which  teaches  that  the  building  up  of  personality 
is  the  aim  of  living,  life,  and  effort  for  man;  that 
onward  and  upward  toward  the  highest  is  the  path 
marked  for  him ;  that  the  infinite  Person  in  whose   i 
image  he  was  made  calls  him  to  imitate  Himself 
— why   should  it  surprise   us,  I  say,  that  such  a  I 
religion  should  train  the  leaders  and  masters  of  J 
men? 

To  believe  that  there  is  an  eternal  relationship 
between  myself  and  Almighty  God ;  that  such 
is  the  relationship  that  when  none  else  can  come 
near  me  He  is  with  me ;  that  though  there  were 
not  another  being  in  the  universe  but  myself,  He 
would  be  with  me ;    that   this   relation,  personal 


136  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN. 

— between  persons,  not  abstractions  nor  ideas — 
shall  stand 

"  When  the  stars  are  old, 
And  the  sun  grows  cold ;  " 

that  I  am  here  in  His  world  to  help  Him  do  His 
work  in  it  in  masterful  and  royal  fashion;  not  to 
shun  toil,  but  to  court  it;  not  to  shirk  responsi- 
bility, but  to  bear  it;  not  to  enjoy,  but  to  suffer, 
as  needs  must  suffer  every  creature  who  will  climb 
higher,  every  man  and  race  of  men  who  are 
wrestling  out  of  the  old  dark  into  the  new  dawn ; 
and  that,  if  so  be,  I  must  wrestle  with  eternal  God 
Himself  alone,  that  the  old  cowardice  may  perish 
and  the  new  courage  may  be  born,  and  so  I 
emerge  a  prince,  at  last  prevailing,  though  I  go 
limping  on  the  heights  of  Peniel — this  belief,  even 
part  grasped  and  part  lived  poorly,  will  give  you 
the  men  who  are  victorious. 

Believed  so  as  to  be  lived,  and  fear  is  gone ;  fear 
of  all  power  save  the  power  ordered,  moral,  right- 
eous, takes  departure.  A  man  himself  says,  yet 
with  no  arrogance   and  no  insolence — with  pro- 

1  found  reverence,  rather,  and  a  noble  humility — "  I 
.  am  a  person  here  among  tilings.     I  have  reason, 
J  judgment,  and  a  sense  of  righteousness;  I  am  an 
'  I,'  and  deliberately  make  my  resolution :  '  I  will 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN  I  37 

arise.'  Being  what  I  am,  I  am  bound;  I  am  under! 
obligation  to  all  around  me ;  I  must  stand  for  the 
best.  The  worst  is  my  enemy.  There  are  end- 
less days  before  me ;  I  cannot  rest.  '  My  Father 
worketh  hitherto,  and  I  work,'  said  the  one  Son 
of  God,  in  whom  and  by  whom  I  too  am  a  son ; 
and  I  am  called  to  work  till  the  hour  strikes." 

There  is  all  the  onwardness,  you  see,  all  the 
restless  energy,  all  the  high  hopefulness,  all  the 
dauntless  courage  of  the  leaders  and  the  lords  who 
have  felled  the  forests,  cleared  the  jungles,  drained 
the  marshes,  and  made  the  homes  and  the  cities 
of  men ;  have  gone  one  long  stride  higher  and 
made  ordered  governments,  rights,  and  justice  for 
men;  and  another  stride  higher  still — have  built 
churches  and  vast  cathedrals,  hospitals  and  homes 
for  the  outcasts  of  a  yet  semi-barbarous  civili- 
zation, proclaiming  that  men  have  a  Father  in 
heaven,  and  that  the  most  wretched  one  of  all  the 
family  is  still  a  person,  and  has  relations  with  the 
rest,  and  especial  relations  with  the  Person  who  is 
from  everlasting  to  everlasting ! 

Nirvana  for  him !      Nay ;  neither  here  nor  any- 
where,  neither    now    nor    forever!      In    the    vast 
worlds  and  aeons  the  "  I  "  can  have  no  rest 
has  been  branded  by  the  awful  brand  of  the  eter 


St 

:: 


138  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN. 

nal  "  I,"  and  branded  for  everlasting.  Evermore 
across  the  ford  that  divides  from  home  and 
Father's  house  he  must  go  limping.  He  must 
stagger  on  over  the  heights  of  Peniel ! 

In  a  universe  where  all  things  change  the  person 
stands  permanent.  No  slow  wearing  of  the  years, 
no  chance  nor  change,  no  sudden  shock  of  force, 
no  earthquake,  no  cyclone,  changes  the  person. 
The  "  I  "  stands  self-conscious  in  all  the  years.  It 
stands  apart  and  looks  at  all  else  from  the  point  of 
its  own  poise. 

It  will  watch  a  star  die  out  in  the  ethereal  deeps, 
(a  sun  that  is,  and  a  system,  and  whatsoever  these 
hold),  and  think  its  thoughts  and  write  out  its  spec- 
ulations in  the  calmness  of  a  fixed  assurance  that, 
come  what  will  to  suns  and  stars  and  systems,  it 
will  stand  outside  and  still  say,  "/think,"  and, 
"  My  opinion  is  thus  and  so." 

It  is  impossible  for  the  developed  personality  to 
imagine  the  universe  existing  and  he  not  there! 
It  is  impossible  for  it  to  imagine  a  universe  de- 
stroyed and  he  not  there  to  see! 

So  our  religion  gives  us  no  respite.  We  cannot 
detach  ourselves  from  our  past.  We  cannot  de- 
cline our  future. 

This  awful  religion  of  ours  still  cries  "  On! "  and 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN.  139 

still  cries  "  Up!"  Duty,  obligation,  work,  endur- 
ance! "  No  rest,"  you  ask  me?  No  rest,  surely, 
in  the  sense  we  use  the  word  here — self-indulgent 
laziness ;  certainly  none  for  a  soul  not  lost.  Is  the 
lost  soul  the  soul  that  declines  responsibility, 
denies  obligation,  refuses  duty,  and  so  has  reached 
Nirvana? 

"So  many  worlds!  So  much  to  do!"  So  far 
between  the  finite  person  and  the  infinite  Person! 
So  many  princedoms  to  attain !  So  many  services 
to  do  for  God  and  the  creatures  of  God! 

Will  man,  the  person,  ever  reach  his  highest  de- 
velopment? "  Eye  hath  not  seen,  nor  ear  heard," 
what  God  hath  in  store  for  His  child ! 

Grant  it  is  all  mystery.  But  the  mystery  must 
contain  what  is  good,  princely,  noble,  manful. 
And  what  these  are  must  be  judged  by  the  ethical 
judgment  of  the  loftiest  and  purest  and  tenderest 
men. 

Ease,  reward,  and  the  struggle  ended;  luxury 
and  splendors  beyond  earthly  dreaming;  crowns, 
scepters,  jewels,  and  golden  houses — the  noblest 
men  care  nothing  for  them  now.  We  are  Christian 
men.  These  things  the  barbaric  kings  of  Ind  may 
make  their  heaven.  The  Lord  we  serve  trampled 
on  them.    We  have  gone  so  far  up  that  our  noblest 


140  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN. 

trample  on  them  too.  Our  reward  is  to  win,  to 
win  again,  and  once  more  to  win!  Give  us  the 
victory;  let  who  will  take  the  triumph!  The 
great  dead  singer  spake  the  thought  of  men 
named  with  the  conquering  name  of  Christ : 

"  Glory  of  virtue  to  fight,  to  struggle,  to  right  the  wrong — 
Nay,  but  she  aimed  not  at  glory,  no  lover  of  glory  she. 
Give  her  the  glory  of  going  on  and  still  to  be! 
She  desires  no  isles  of  the  blest,  no  quiet  seats  of  the  just, 
To  rest  in  a  golden  grove  or  bask  in  a  summer  sky. 
Give  her  the  wages  of  going  on  and  not  to  die." 

Nay,  the  highest  thing  on  earth  conceivable  to 
man  is  the  human  pneuma.  "What  know  we 
greater  than  the  soul?"  Personality  is  eternal. 
We  are  ordained  for  our  future.  It  demands  us, 
and  will  take  no  refusal. 

And  person  means  obligation,  duty,  service. 
The  world  is  a  world  of  service.  God  serves  and 
man  serves.  Shall  not  every  world  be  a  world  of 
service? 

If  the  "  I "  win  on — which  God  wants  it  to  do 
and  made  it  to  do ;  if  it  become  more  and  more 
an  "  I,"  more  and  more  a  pronounced  and  strong 
"I,"  as  it  grows  nearer  its  sole  companionship,  the 
everlasting  and  awful  "  I,"  shall  it  not  find  the 
obligations  growing,  the  duties  growing,  the  re- 


RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN.  141 

sponsibilities  growing;  and  shall  it  not  find  for- 
ever, as  it  finds  now,  and  in  all  worlds,  as  it  finds 
in  this,  that  the  growth  comes — the  development 
— according  to  the  ideal  pattern  seen  in  the  mount 
of  spiritual  vision,  amid  the  thunders  and  lightnings 
of  the  presence  of  the  infinite  "  I  " — that  it  can  only 
grow  and  only  develop  and  only  be  saved  from 
Nirvana  and  eternal  death  by  facing  the  responsi- 
bilities, doing  the  duties,  bending  under  the  bur- 
dens; and  with  a  ringing  cheer  of  thanks  for  the 
high  privilege,  by  accepting  the  everlasting  law  of 
service  ? 

I  have  spoken  of  the  doctrine  of  Personality — 
the  Personality  of  God,  the  personality  of  man,  the 
special,  distinct  peculiarity  of  the  all-conquering 
religion  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  Man  consecrated  to 
deliver — as  an  awful  thing — it  is;  as  a  lonely 
thing — it  is;  as  a  painful,  sorrowing,  bitter  thing 
— it  is. 

But  let  us  not  forget  the  end — our  Lord  set  it 
before  men — to  become  sons  of  God;  to  remain 
sons  of  God  when  God  puts  the  stars  out  as  you 
would  snuff  a  candle ;  princes,  because  they  have 
wrestled  with  God  and  men,  and  have  won.  That 
is  the  end  of  the  law  of  development,  according  to 
revelation ! 


142  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  MAN. 

To  become  a  person  who  is  like  the  Personality 
of  God — that  is  the  end. 

"Not  enjoyment  and  not  sorrow 
Is  our  being's  end  and  aim," 

but  to  become  more  and  more  a  person  who,  upon 
the  sands  of  the  farthest  shore  of  space,  and  in  the 
midnight  of  wrecking  worlds,  can  yet  dare  to 
wrestle  with  Almighty  God,  and  say,  "  I  will  not 
let  Thee  go,  except  Thou  bless  me ; "  and  who  can, 
in  the  midst  of  the  flaming  spears  of  the  bursting 
dawn,  stagger  on,  upon  the  summits  of  the  eternal 
hills,  on  flame  with  the  eternal  day,  to  meet  the 
Maker,  the  awful  "  I  Am  that  I  Am,"  who  has 
dwelt  in  the  thick  darkness,  and  so  see  God  face 
to  face,  and  live! 


BY    THE    SAME   AUTHOR. 

THE  WORLD  AND  THE  LOGOS. 

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common-sense  side  of  the  question— from  his  point  of  view— was  never  before  so 
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THE  WORLD  AND  THE  KINGDOM. 

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fident, interest  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  readers." — From  the  Saturday  Review, 
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THE  WORLD  AND  THE  MAN. 

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i2mo,  cloth,  $1.25. 

"And  what  a  rich  and  rare  style  he  has  of  putting  his  thoughts  !  Every  line  of 
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contemplation,  is  stamped  with  the  fresh,  singular  individuality  of  the  man." — 
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"COPY." 

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Illustrations,  Incidents,  Episodes,  Yarns, 
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Witticisms,  Epigrams  and  Bon  Mots, 
gathered  from  all  sources,  old  and 
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"  It  is  a  book  to  interest  all  classes  of  readers,  and  in  every  mood 
from  grave  to  gay.     It  is  a  neatly  printed  volume  in  clear  type." 

—  The  Inter-Ocean,  Chicago. 

"  Mr.  Miles  deserves  great  credit.  Diners-out  and  society  raconteurs 
should  welcome  with  fervent  enthusiasm  the  publication  of  this  book." 

—  The  Daily  Telegraph,  London. 

"  This  volume  is  sure  to  be  found  useful  to  several  classes  of  public 
speakers  and  to  be  prized  by  them.  As  a  piece  of  good  presswork  it 
leaves  nothing  to  be  desired." — The  Living  Church. 

"  The  stories  are  gathered  from  all  sources,  old  and  new,  and,  if  the 
old  predominate,  we  can  recall  that  '  a  good  story  bears  repetition.' 
Our  choice  is  practically  unlimited — famed  wits,  musicians,  players, 
preachers,  lawyers,  doctors,  soldiers,  printers,  misers,  rogues,  and 
royalty,  all  contribute  their  quota  to  our  amusement,  and  a  cursory 
glance  at  the  excellently  classified  index  will  suffice  to  show  how  much 
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gift  for  the  solitary  man  addicted  to  melancholy." — 7 he  Public  Ledger, 

"  Of  Mr.  Miles'  collection  as  a  whole  one  may  say  that  it  contains 
little  that  is  not  really  good  and  a  great  deal  that  is  excellent.  As  a 
volume  for  occasional  reading  in  moments  of  leisure  or  as  an  antidote  to 
attacks  of  the  blues,  it  offers  very  manifest  advantages.  A  by  no  means 
minor  attraction  of  the  volume  is  to  be  found  in  the  clear  and  handsome 
typography  which  has  been  given  to  it  by  the  publishers." 

—  The  Beacon,  Boston. 


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Two  Books  for  the  Times 

By  GEORGE   HODGES,  D.D. 

DEAN  OF  THE  EPISCOPAL  THEOLOGICAL  SCHOOL,  CAMBRIDGE. 


THE   HERESY  OF  CAIN. 

Price,  $1.00. 

44  The  writer  has  a  wonderfully  striking  way  of   putting  things." 

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philanthropy,  almost  clamorous  for  Christian  unity,  the  volume  will  be  a 
surprise  and  delight  to  many,  even  to  some  who  cannot  endorse  all  the 
views  presented." — S.  S.  Times. 

"  The  reader  may  not  be  told  in  so  many  words  just  what  the  heresy 
of  Cain  is,  but  when  he  gets  through  with  this  book  he  will  have  no 
doubt  about  it.  It  is  the  heresy  of  him  who  denies  that  he  is  in  any  way 
his  brother's  keeper.  Dr.  Hodges  is  an  inspired  apostle  of  the  new 
philanthropy.  This  furnishes  the  title  of  his  opening  discourse,  but  the 
theme  runs  nearly  through  the  whole  book.  These  addresses  are  not  in 
the  conventional  type  of  ecclesiasticism.  They  are  fresh,  bright,  earnest, 
stimulating.  They  are  the  words  of  a  man  who  'means  business,'  and 
they  are  presented  with  the  directness  and  clearness  of  a  business-like 
man . ' '—  Christian  Reg  ister. 

CHRISTIANITY  BETWEEN  SUNDAYS. 

Price,  $1.00. 

"Dr.  Hodges  believes  that  Christianity  means  the  bettering  of 
common  life ;  that  it  has  just  as  much  to  do  with  business  as  it  has  with 
religion,  and  six  times  as  much  to  do  with  week-days  as  with  Sundays. 
There  are  twenty-one  sermons  in  this  collection,  so  many  eloquent  proofs 
that  the  author's  religion  is  not  a  thing  kept  apart  for  Sundays,  but  taken 
up  ever)'  morning  with  a  sense  of  consecration  to  his  Master's  business." 

— Public  Ledger. 

"  This  is  a  spicy  and  irresistibly  readable  book  of  short  essays  that 
have  a  moral  purpose  and  are  full  of  pertinent  illustration.." 

— Boston  herald. 


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The  Master's  Guide 

for  His  Disciples 

Being  a  manual  of  all  the  recorded  sayings  of  Jesus,  ar- 
ranged for  easy  consultation  and  systematic  reading, 
with  a  preface  by  Eugene  Stock,  author  of  "  Lessons 
on  the  Life  of  our  Lord." 

"  The  little  book  embodies  a  very  happy  thought  in  a  very  happy 
form.  The  thought  was  to  ascertain  what  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  actually 
said  on  various  topics,  doctrinal,  spiritual,  and  practical,  and  so  to 
present  the  result  of  the  inquiry  as  to  give  real  assistance  to  those  who 
desire  to  know  and  obey  their  Master's  words.  The  form  adopted  is  to 
take  every  one  of  the  recorded  sayings  of  Christ  and  group  them  together 
without  comment  under  various  headings,  so  that  no  part  of  His  teach- 
ings shall  be  missed.  I  am  sure  that  every  reader  will  be  grateful  to  the 
compiler  for  thus  arranging  for  him  the  words  of  Him  who  spake  as 
never  man  spake." — Eugene  Stock. 

"It  was  a  happy  inspiration  that  moved  the  preparation  of 
this  little  volume,  which  arranges,  in  a  following  of  the  Revised 
Version,  all  of  our  Blessed  Lord's  teachings,  topically,  in  the 
several  departments  of  the  whole  Christian  life  and  truth.  The 
work  falls  naturally  and  easily  into  three  main  divisions;  namely, 
the  Devout  Life,  which  groups  in  a  suggestive  way  all  sayings 
of  the  Master  touching  Christian  worship,  the  Christian  spirit, 
and  the  Christian  virtues ;  the  Practical  Life,  which  includes 
every  teaching  of  Jesus  that  is  concerned  with  Christian  conduct 
and  the  Christian  relations;  the  Intellectual  Life,  comprehensive 
of  all  essential  Christian  truth  which  He  unfolded  ;  that  is  to 
say,  the  spiritual  doctrines  that  were  given  by  Christ  to  His  dis- 
ciples. All  these  recorded  utterances  of  the  word  which  came 
down  from  heaven,  when  looked  at  aside  from  their  earthly  sur- 
roundings, quite  detached  from  their  context  and  classed  to- 
gether according  to  their  subjects,  present  a  very  striking  study. 
The  narrow-formed  volume  is  beautifully  printed  and  bound,  a 
credit  to  the  publisher,  and  would  be  found  an  uncommonly  neat 
and  acceptable  little  gift." — Living  Church. 

TO  BE  HAD  IN  THE  FOLLOWING  STYLES: 

i.   Dark  cloth,  red  top  to  leaves.     Price,  $1.00. 

2.  White  cloth,  full  gilt  edges  (in  box).     Price,  $1.25. 

3.  Persian  seal,  limp,  round  corners,  gilt  edges  (in  box). 

Price,  $2.00. 


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2  and  3  Bible  House  -  -  New  York 


Dean  Hole's  Addresses 


Addresses  spoken  to  workingmen  from  pulpit  and  plat- 
form. By  S.  Reynolds  Hole,  D.D.,  Dean  of  Roches- 
ter.    Price,  $1.50. 

"  The  Church  of  England  can  boast  of  some  very  wise  Deans, 
a  few,  very  few  witty  ones,  and  a  long  succession  of  eminently 
good  ones.  But  seldom  indeed  has  one  appeared  in  whose  per- 
sonality this  triad  of  excellence  has  been  manifested  so  conspicu- 
ously as  in  the  author  of  this  book.  The  few  books  he  has  written 
(but  those  few— how  good !),  the  many  words  he  has  spoken,  the 
thorough  devotedness  of  his  pastoral  life  as  parish  priest  of  a 
small  village  during  thirty  years,  unite  to  prove  the  truth  of  our 
estimate  of  him.  These  addresses  and  sermons  are  thoroughly 
characteristic  of  the  man.  The  platform  speeches  are  a  rare 
combination  of  wit  and  wisdom  quickened  by  earnest  desire  for 
the  highest  welfare  of  his  audience."— Pacific  Churchman. 

"The  same  qualities— naturalness,  kindness,  sympathy  and 
shrewdness— which  rendered  his  reminiscences  so  pleasant  will 
be  found  to  have  made  this  work  agreeable  also  as  well  as  useful. 
Some  of  the  contents  have  texts  and  some  do  not  have,  but  one 
and  all  are  frank,  manly,  wholesome  appeals  to  the  spiritual  side 
of  human  nature  to  recognize  and  obey  obligations  to  God. "—The 
Congregationalist. 

"  We  recommend  them  to  all  those  who  have  to  speak  to  the 
working  class  as  examples  of  simplicity  and  force  without  vulgarity. 
Some,  as  that  on  gambling  and  betting,  are  already  well  known  ; 
others,  such  as  '  Do  you  Read  the  Bible  ? '  'Bible  Temperance,' 
and  'Who  is  a  Gentleman  ?'  deserve  to  be  as  widely  known  for 
their  shrewd  common  sense." — The  Church?nan. 

"  There  is  but  one  Dean  Hole,  and  his  individuality  is  stamped 
on  every  page  of  this  book." — The  Literary  World. 


THOMAS   WHITTAKER,  Publisher 
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THE  RIGHT  ROAD 

A  Hand-Book  for  Parents  and  Teachers. 

BY  THE 

Rev.  JOHN  W.  KRAMER. 

12mo,  cloth  binding,         -         -         Price,  $1,25» 


"  There  is  not  a  dull  page  in  it.  Even  the  bad  boy  who  dislikes  moral 
lectures  will  like  pleasant  chats  :  he  will  take  the  moral  pills  for  the  sake 
of  their  sugar  coating,  if  for  nothing  else.  Parents  will  find  this  excellent 
book  helpful  in  getting  their  children  on  the  right  road  and  keeping  them 
there." — The  Home  Journal. 

"  '  The  Right  Road  '  presents  John  W.  Kramer's  plan  of  giving  instruc- 
tion to  children,  and  of  arousing  their  personal  interest  in  the  principles  and 
practice  of  Christian  morality.  By  means  of  simply  worded  observations, 
and  a  great  variety  of  short  stories,  he  undertakes  to  teach  a  child  something 
about  personal  responsibility,  right  and  duty.  Under  duty,  instruction  and 
illustrations  are  given  concerning  duties  to  one's  self — such  as  cleanliness, 
temperance,  truthfulness,  courage,  self-control,  order,  thrift,  culture  and 
purity,  duties  to  others — honor  of  parents,  patriotism,  honesty,  justice, 
mercy,  philanthropy,  courtesy,  gratitude  and  kindness  to  animals,  duties  to 
God — embracing  reverence,  worship  and  service." — The  Interior. 

"As  a  treatise  on  practical  ethics  the  book  has  decided  merits.  It 
treats  of  nearly  all  aspects  of  morality,  setting  forth  the  nature  and  the 
obligation  of  the  various  kinds  of  duty  in  a  clear  and  simple  style  and  in  a 
manner  likely  to  interest  the  young.  The  different  virtues  and  vices  are 
illustrated  by  numerous  examples  in  the  story  form,  some  of  them  historical, 
other  fictitious,  and  many  of  them  are  fitted  not  only  to  illustrate  the  habits 
of  good  conduct,  but  to  inspire  the  reader  with  a  love  for  them.  The  book 
is  more  manly  than  such  books  usually  are,  the  strong  and  positive  virtues 
being  given  the  importance  that  justly  belongs  to  them.  The  last  section  of 
the  book  and  duty  to  God  is  excellent,  and  is  by  no  means  uncalled  for  in 
times  like  these." — Critic. 


THOMAS  WHITTAKER,  2  AND  3  BIBLE  HOUSE,  HEW  YORK. 


REMINISCENCES 

BY 

Thomas   March   Clark,  D.D.,  LL.D 

BISHOP   OF    RHODE    ISLAND 


12mo,  Cloth.    With   portrait  of  the  author 
Price  $1.25 


"The  book  is  a  most  delightful  one,  and  any  reader  who  fairly 
begins  it  will  not  lay  it  down  willingly  until  it  be  finished." 

— The  Picayune,  New  Orleans. 

"All  churchmen  in  this  country  will  be  refreshed  by  a  perusal  of 
this  revival  of  the  times  and  the  men  that  are  woven  into  Bishop 
Clark's  biography.  A  list  of  the  names  of  the  latter  would  create  an 
instant  and  eager  demand  for  the  book.  It  is  written  sufficiently  in  the 
ana  spirit  and  style  to  give  it  zest  to  the  last  page." 

—  The  Courier,  Boston. 

"  His  life  has  been  a  busy  one,  and  it  is  a  matter  for  congratulation 
that  he  has  yielded  to  the  importunities  of  his  friends  and  published  a 
volume  of  his  reminiscences.  It  abounds  in  character  sketch  and  anec- 
dote, a  model  of  what  such  a  volume  ought  to  be.  It  has  not  a  dull 
page." — The  Advertiser ,  Boston. 

"  The  book  abounds  in  pleasant  anecdotes  and  incidents  of  Church 
history  in  the  United  States  and  of  notable  characters  among  prelates 
and  pastors.  These  will  render  it  of  especial  interest  to  Episcopalian 
readers,  to  whom  the  names  are,  of  course,  more  familiar  than  to  others. 
But  the  intense  human  interest  that  pervades  the  book,  and  its  genial 
manner,  will  effectually  prevent  its  seeming  a  dull  volume  to  any  one." 

Inter-Ocean,  Chicago. 


***For  sale  at  all  bookstores,  or  copies  sent  post-paid  on  receipt  of  price 
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PSALM-MOSAICS 

A  BIOGRAPHICAL  AND  HISTORICAL 
COMMENTARY   ON   THE   PSALMS 

By    Rev.    A.    SAUNDERS    DYER,    M.A. 

589  Pages.    8vo,  Cloth.     Price  $2.50 


"  Let  no  one  be  misled  by  the  title  of  this  book  into  fancying  it  a 
work  of  dry  or  abstruse  theological  reading.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  a 
very  lively  and  extensive  collection  of  matter  illustrative  of  the  Psalms, 
both  prose  and  verse  being  employed.  It  is  a  sort  of  commonplace 
book  on  the  Psalter,  evidently  the  work  of  considerable  time  and  exten- 
sive reading,  and  arranged  with  sufficient  orderliness  and  method  to 
avoid  the  appearance  of  desultoriness.  It  is  a  book  to  lie  on  one's 
table,  to  be  taken  up  with  the  study  of  each  Psalm,  and  one  peculiarly 
rich  in  suggestive  matter.  For  instance,  on  the  one  hundred  and  thirty- 
sixth  Psalm  there  is  given  the  striking  story  of  its  use  by  St.  Athanasius 
on  the  night  when  his  enemies  attacked  the  cathedral  in  Alexandria,  and 
with  each  Psalm  is  usually  given  some  historic  association.  A  good 
index  will  aid  the  reader  in  keeping  track  of  this  widespread  miscellany." 

—  The  Churchman. 

"  This  is  a  good  book,  furnishing  much  fresh  historical  matter  illus- 
trative of  the  influence  of  the  Psalms  in  literature  and  biography,  and  it 
will  be  very  useful  to  all  Christians  and  especially  to  expounders  of  the 
Word." — N.  Y.  Observer. 

"  A  magnificent  collection  of  biographical  and  historical  illustrations 
of  the  Psalms  gathered  as  a  devotional  help  to  the  reader  in  the  religious 
life.  It  is  a  commentary  of  unique  interest  in  its  wealth  of  fresh  and 
helpful  material." — The  Parish  Visitor. 

"  Rev.  A.  S.  Dyer  has  prepared  a  unique  and  quite  interesting  book 
for  Biblical  scholars.  It  may  be  described  tersely  as  a  collection  of 
biographical,  historical  and  miscellaneous  illustrations  of  the  Psalms 
gathered  from  many  sources  and  classified  in  the  order  of  the  Psalms  to 
which  they  relate.  It  is  a  book  of  material  which  Christians  may  use  to 
advantage.  It  is  not  in  any  sense  a  connected  narrative,  but  a  collection 
of  diversified  incidents  and  suggestions  of  considerable  illustrative  value, 
and  ordinarily  of  even  greater  devotional  helpfulness." 

—  The  Congregationalist, 


THOMAS  WHITTAKER,  Publisher 
2  and  3  Bible  House  NEW  YORK 


ii>i'miti'?r,Theolo9":al  Semmary-Speer  Lii 


1    1012  01145  7092 


